The next time Big Oil and those in their thrall, including Messrs. Harper & Ignatieff, give you the standard drivel about how CCS, carbon capture & sequestration, is going to redeem the Athabasca Tar Sands disaster, tell'em to look Down Under.
Australia. The Gorgon natural gas field off Barrow Island. Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell have agreed to invest in the project - but their money comes with a hitch as Big Oil money almost always does.
In the case of Australia's Gorgon gas field the hitch is an indemnity against damages from all that sequestered carbon dioxide escaping hundreds of years into the future. And that indemnity comes from where? Why, from the Australian taxpayers of course. The Fossil Fuelers negotiated an indemnity from the Australian government for the toxic time bomb they'll be creating underground.
Australian energy minister Martin Ferguson boasts that the Gorgon and similar LNG projects will transform Australia into an "energy superpower." Sound familiar?
The Australian government says "no worries" to the idea of anything ever, ever going wrong with the sequestered CO2 although the Gorgon field sits astride geological fault lines and there have been eight tremors there over the past 30-years.
If they got away with it in Australia, how long before Alberta's Oil Patch goes after Alberta and Ottawa for the same sweetheart deal?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Iggy's Off the Hook
I think Michael Ignatieff ought to send a lovely gift basket to Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe for the wonderful things they've done for the Liberal leader.
First of all, they've shown that all that bluster and indignation about the Libs propping up Harper was so much B.S. How many times did we listen to that sanctimonious bald-headed twerp demand Iggy stand up to Harper - until he did - sending Jack diving headlong into the deepend of the hypocrisy pool.
Most importantly, however, is they've taken Iggy off the hook. He can't trigger an election which is probably much better for the LPC than for the CPC. Here's why. No election means Harper isn't going to be able to duck Copenhagen in December.
Between now and December, Harper is going to have to formulate Canada's policy on slashing greenhouse gas emissions. If he does nothing meaningful, Canada will be seen as a pariah at the climate change summit. If he does come up with an effective, carbon-emissions programme, he's going to have to address the Athabasca Tar Sands problem. That, for Steve, is a no-win proposition. He knows it and that's why he's been ducking it since he came to power.
There's not much middle ground on this one, not enough anyway. Steve can't fall back on CCS (carbon capture & sequestration) any longer. The Oil Patch has been 'calling wolf' on that for much too long for it to be a credible dodge now. Even if it could be made to work, it would take decades to implement and it wouldn't be economically viable to Big Oil. That means the cost of CCS would have to be shifted to the Canadian taxpayer and how do you think that would be greeted?
Iggy has shown himself to be a really amateurish politician but the gods have given him this one, perhaps last chance to fix Harper in a totally vulnerable position. The rest of the world - including the European Union, the scientific community, the medical community, the United Nations, even China and India - will be going full-bore on climate change in the runup to Copenhagen. Harper is going to come out with some gossamer policy and Iggy, if he has any guts, will be able to poke holes right through it.
Let's put it this way. There are a lot more Canadians worried about climate change and global warming than those worried about how much bitumen can be processed in Athabasca. Iggy ignores that at his peril.
First of all, they've shown that all that bluster and indignation about the Libs propping up Harper was so much B.S. How many times did we listen to that sanctimonious bald-headed twerp demand Iggy stand up to Harper - until he did - sending Jack diving headlong into the deepend of the hypocrisy pool.
Most importantly, however, is they've taken Iggy off the hook. He can't trigger an election which is probably much better for the LPC than for the CPC. Here's why. No election means Harper isn't going to be able to duck Copenhagen in December.
Between now and December, Harper is going to have to formulate Canada's policy on slashing greenhouse gas emissions. If he does nothing meaningful, Canada will be seen as a pariah at the climate change summit. If he does come up with an effective, carbon-emissions programme, he's going to have to address the Athabasca Tar Sands problem. That, for Steve, is a no-win proposition. He knows it and that's why he's been ducking it since he came to power.
There's not much middle ground on this one, not enough anyway. Steve can't fall back on CCS (carbon capture & sequestration) any longer. The Oil Patch has been 'calling wolf' on that for much too long for it to be a credible dodge now. Even if it could be made to work, it would take decades to implement and it wouldn't be economically viable to Big Oil. That means the cost of CCS would have to be shifted to the Canadian taxpayer and how do you think that would be greeted?
Iggy has shown himself to be a really amateurish politician but the gods have given him this one, perhaps last chance to fix Harper in a totally vulnerable position. The rest of the world - including the European Union, the scientific community, the medical community, the United Nations, even China and India - will be going full-bore on climate change in the runup to Copenhagen. Harper is going to come out with some gossamer policy and Iggy, if he has any guts, will be able to poke holes right through it.
Let's put it this way. There are a lot more Canadians worried about climate change and global warming than those worried about how much bitumen can be processed in Athabasca. Iggy ignores that at his peril.
Obama Kills Plan to Stage Missiles on Russia's Doorstep
And it's about bloody time, too. Barack Obama has rescinded the Bush administration's mad plan to position anti-missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic ostensibly to defend against rogue missile launches from Iran.
Everyone, and I mean every one, knew that gambit had nothing to do with Iran. Instead it was an integral part of Bush's plan to march NATO right to Russia's borders with a view to shoehorning Moscow out of Central Asia altogether. The prize is the Caspian Basin or, more directly, the massive fossil fuel reserves found there.
What Bush/Cheney never admitted was that Iran has no missiles that could get anywhere near Poland or the Czech Republic. It might have made sense to locate the American batteries closer to Iran, say perhaps in Turkey.
So now Obama has the Poles and the Czechs steamed. They were going to be handsomely rewarded for allowing the anti-missile batteries on their territory and, like the rest of the world, they knew the American weaponry was meant for Russia, not Iran.
Everyone, and I mean every one, knew that gambit had nothing to do with Iran. Instead it was an integral part of Bush's plan to march NATO right to Russia's borders with a view to shoehorning Moscow out of Central Asia altogether. The prize is the Caspian Basin or, more directly, the massive fossil fuel reserves found there.
What Bush/Cheney never admitted was that Iran has no missiles that could get anywhere near Poland or the Czech Republic. It might have made sense to locate the American batteries closer to Iran, say perhaps in Turkey.
So now Obama has the Poles and the Czechs steamed. They were going to be handsomely rewarded for allowing the anti-missile batteries on their territory and, like the rest of the world, they knew the American weaponry was meant for Russia, not Iran.
The Case for Retaining Capital Punishment
I oppose capital punishment for many reasons but mainly because it doesn't deter capital crimes. That said, I'm beginning to think there might just be an exception or two to total abolition.
I've always thought that maybe, just maybe, an exception should be made for hit men, professional assassins. Lump them in with serial killers, especially those who prey on children. Clifford Olsen, are you hearing me?
Now I'm thinking there might just be another exception - people like the top executives at British oil trader Trafigura for example. These are what I might, for want of a better term, call "greed killers." For the sake of making a several million bucks they're indifferent to the likely consequences to others they prey upon. From The Guardian:
The Guardian can reveal evidence today of a massive cover-up by the British oil trader Trafigura, in one of the worst pollution disasters in recent history.
Internal emails show that Trafigura, which yesterday suddenly announced an offer to pay compensation to 31,000 west African victims, was fully aware that its waste dumped in Ivory Coast was so toxic that it was banned in Europe.
Thousands of west Africans besieged local hospitals in 2006, and a number died, after the dumping of hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic oil waste around the country's capital, Abidjan. Official local autopsy reports on 12 alleged victims appeared to show fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste's lethal byproducts.
Trafigura has been publicly insisting for three years that its waste was routine and harmless. It claims it was "absolutely not dangerous".
It has until now denied compensation claims, and its lawyers repeatedly threatened anyone worldwide who sought to contradict its version. It launched a libel case against BBC Newsnight, forced an alleged correction from the Times, demanded the Guardian delete articles, and yesterday tried to gag journalists in the Netherlands and Norway with legal threats.
But the dozens of damning internal Trafigura emails which have now come to light reveal how traders were told in advance that their planned chemical operation, a cheap and dirty process called "caustic washing", generated such dangerous wastes that it was widely outlawed in the west.
The documents reveal that the London-based traders hoped to make profits of $7m a time by buying up what they called "bloody cheap" cargoes of sulphur-contaminated Mexican gasoline. They decided to try to process the fuel on board a tanker anchored offshore, creating toxic waste they called "slops".
...The resulting black, stinking, slurry was eventually dumped around landfills in Abidjan, after Trafigura paid an unqualified local man to take it away in tanker trucks at a cheap rate.
Trafigura is throwing millions at the victims in the hope of settling their claims without admitting liability. It argues the autopsy results are unreliable and that lethal hydrogen sulphide in the slops was only there in "potential" form. The company is the world's third largest oil trader and, according to The Guardian, its 200-traders received annual bonuses of up to $1-million last year.
Trafigura's $31-million settlement is a hit, no doubt about that, but it's still little more than a cost of doing business, a risk that didn't pay out as they had hoped. I'm thinking if the people who made these awful decisions, the real pillagers, had a little something on their minds beyond the prospective fortunes to be had, we'd have a lot fewer of these tragedies.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Is a Hybrid Really Good Enough?
I admit it, I'm technologically challenged, overwhelmed even. I'm a pushrod-era gearhead, a living artifact.
That's why I'm appealing to more current technophiles for a bit of advice. Cars. Hybrid cars. I'm looking at replacing my decade plus old VW. I don't drive much. My regular transport, summer and winter, is my trusty BMW motorcycle. That said, there are times when I need a car especially coming from my little, out of the way town with its all but non-existant public transit.
So I'm looking at new wheels. Thus far I've been checking out hybrids - Ford, Toyota (Prius III and Camry) and Honda. They seem pretty impressive, a clear improvement over their straight gas cousins, but I'm not sure.
Is the hybrid the best way to go today or is there some wonder technology just around the corner that, within a year or two, will make me wish that I'd waited?
If you have any information or suggestions, let me know. Thanks.
That's why I'm appealing to more current technophiles for a bit of advice. Cars. Hybrid cars. I'm looking at replacing my decade plus old VW. I don't drive much. My regular transport, summer and winter, is my trusty BMW motorcycle. That said, there are times when I need a car especially coming from my little, out of the way town with its all but non-existant public transit.
So I'm looking at new wheels. Thus far I've been checking out hybrids - Ford, Toyota (Prius III and Camry) and Honda. They seem pretty impressive, a clear improvement over their straight gas cousins, but I'm not sure.
Is the hybrid the best way to go today or is there some wonder technology just around the corner that, within a year or two, will make me wish that I'd waited?
If you have any information or suggestions, let me know. Thanks.
Making the Victim Pay
This story from AlterNet. In 8 US states and the District of Columbia, private health insurers classify spousal abuse as a "pre-existing condition" to jack up premiums or deny coverage to abused spouses:
Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
In human terms, it's a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.
In 2006, Democrats tried to end the practice. An amendment introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), now a member of leadership, split the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee 10-10. The tie meant that the measure failed.
All ten no votes were Republicans, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), a member of the "Gang of Six" on the Finance Committee who are hashing out a bipartisan bill.
Only in America. Yeah, sure.
Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
In human terms, it's a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.
In 2006, Democrats tried to end the practice. An amendment introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), now a member of leadership, split the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee 10-10. The tie meant that the measure failed.
All ten no votes were Republicans, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), a member of the "Gang of Six" on the Finance Committee who are hashing out a bipartisan bill.
Only in America. Yeah, sure.
The Mafia's Mediterranean Time Bomb
Italian authorities, tipped off by a Mafia turncoat, have found a scuttled freighter laden with drums of toxic waste lying in 500-meters of water off southwest Italy.
The head of Calabria's environment agency says the mob may have sunk as many as 32-ships in his region. From Reuters:
The ship, which officials say may even contain radioactive elements, lay in 500 meters (yards) of water in the Tyrrhenian sea. TV images showed at least one barrel had fallen from its damaged hull and lay empty on the seabed.
"There could be problems of toxins and heavy metals ... this is an issue for the whole international community," said Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria's environment agency.
The ship's location was revealed by Francesco Fonti, an ex-member of Calabria's feared 'Ndrangheta crime group, who confessed to using explosives to sink this vessel and two others.
Greco said investigators believed there were 32 ships carrying toxic waste sunk by the mafia since the introduction of tighter environmental legislation in the 1980s made illegal waste disposal a lucrative business for crime groups.
"The Mediterranean is 0.7 percent of the world's seas. If in this tiny portion there are more than 30 (toxic waste) shipwrecks, imagine what there could be elsewhere," he said
The head of Calabria's environment agency says the mob may have sunk as many as 32-ships in his region. From Reuters:
The ship, which officials say may even contain radioactive elements, lay in 500 meters (yards) of water in the Tyrrhenian sea. TV images showed at least one barrel had fallen from its damaged hull and lay empty on the seabed.
"There could be problems of toxins and heavy metals ... this is an issue for the whole international community," said Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria's environment agency.
The ship's location was revealed by Francesco Fonti, an ex-member of Calabria's feared 'Ndrangheta crime group, who confessed to using explosives to sink this vessel and two others.
Greco said investigators believed there were 32 ships carrying toxic waste sunk by the mafia since the introduction of tighter environmental legislation in the 1980s made illegal waste disposal a lucrative business for crime groups.
"The Mediterranean is 0.7 percent of the world's seas. If in this tiny portion there are more than 30 (toxic waste) shipwrecks, imagine what there could be elsewhere," he said
Averting a Looming Global Health Catastrophe
The upcoming climate change summit to be held in December in Copenhagen will determine whether millions, perhaps many hundreds of millions of people, will live or die.
That reality has prompted two prestigious British publications, The British Medical Journal and The Lancet to issue a joint call for a radically new mindset on climate change. That, in their view, is mankind's only hope of averting a looming global health catastrophe:
The scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report in 2007. There is now equally wide consensus that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050 if we are to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures from exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2 degrees, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change.
The economic argument that taking action now rather than later will be cheaper has also been widely accepted since the Stern report in 2006. The election of President Obama has shifted policy in the US from seeking to block an agreement to seeking to find one.
So the chances of success should be good, but the politics are tough. The most vocal arguments are about equity: the rich world caused the problem so why should the poor world pay to put it right?
Can the rich world do enough through its own actions and through its financial and technological support for the poor to persuade the poor to join in a global agreement? The present economic climate doesn't help, giving sceptics from the rich world arguments for not acting—or at least not acting now. And the sensitive issue of population stabilisation continues to slip off the agenda but is crucial to achieving real reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions.
These arguments need to be tackled head on. Climate change is global, and emissions know no frontiers. The necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity.
Coal-fired power stations and internal combustion engines pollute the atmosphere and worsen health, and deforestation destroys biodiversity, whereas saving energy helps hard-pressed household budgets, and drought-resistant crops help poor farmers. So even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agriculture technology is strong. Climate change makes it unanswerable.
The threat to health is especially evident in poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as the recent Lancet and University College London report shows. These countries are struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
Their poverty and lack of resources, infrastructure, and often governance, greatly increase their vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Warmer climate can lead to drought, pressure on resources (particularly water), migration, and conflict. The conflict in Darfur is as much about pressure on resources as the desert encroaches as about the internal politics of Sudan.
And the implications for the health of local populations are acute: on the spread and changing patterns of disease, notably water-borne diseases from inadequate and unclean supplies; on maternal and child mortality as basic health services collapse; and on malnutrition where food is scarce. And population stabilisation will not be achieved if, for want of resources, girls are not educated and contraceptives are unavailable.
Climate change is causing other kinds of extreme weather events too: storms, floods, and rising sea levels affecting coastal populations and islands. Every such event has adverse consequences for health. The poorer the country and its infrastructure, the worse are the consequences and the poorer the chances of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
Crucially for winning hearts and minds in richer countries, what's good for the climate is good for health. The measures needed to combat climate change coincide with those needed to ensure a healthier population and reduce the burden on health services. A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low-carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Opportunity, surely, not cost.
This is an opportunity too to advance health equity, which is increasingly seen as necessary for a healthy and happy society. If we take climate change seriously, it will require major changes to the way we live, reducing the gap between carbon rich and carbon poor within and between countries.
The Commission on Social Determinants of Health said that action to promote health must go well beyond health care. It must focus on the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and in the structural drivers of those conditions—inequities in power, money, and resources. These insights give further confirmation that what is good for the climate is good for health.
A successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilisation. It will require recognition by the rich countries of their obligations to the poor; and recognition by the poor countries that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution in which we all have to play a part.
It will require a new mindset: that the measures needed to mitigate the risks of climate change and adapt to its already inevitable effects provide an opportunity to achieve goals that are desirable in their own right – the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the poor countries and a healthier more equal society in the rich world and globally. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen.
The full-bore carbon pimps otherwise known as the Harper government have no interest in radical emission reductions. They say they do and they're lying through their teeth. Anyone who supports boosting Athabasca's environmental atrocity (hey Iggy boosters, that's your guy too) won't be going to Copenhagen with the midset the world needs to tackle this threat while there's still time. And there's no reason for you Dippers to get smug. Layton, with his "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach to carbon taxation, is every bit as much a sphincter as the others.
The problem is those who lay claim to the mantle of leaders in Canada don't see Copenhagen as an opportunity but as a problem, something to be handled, managed; a public perception challenge. If they have their way Copenhagen will be a failure. Understand this - Harper, Layton, Ignatieff are not on your side in this or your children's or your grandchildren's side. If they were, they would have been howling about this, loud and clear, long before now to get the Canadian public engaged on this threat. They haven't and that's all you need to know about where they stand.
That reality has prompted two prestigious British publications, The British Medical Journal and The Lancet to issue a joint call for a radically new mindset on climate change. That, in their view, is mankind's only hope of averting a looming global health catastrophe:
The scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report in 2007. There is now equally wide consensus that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050 if we are to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures from exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2 degrees, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change.
The economic argument that taking action now rather than later will be cheaper has also been widely accepted since the Stern report in 2006. The election of President Obama has shifted policy in the US from seeking to block an agreement to seeking to find one.
So the chances of success should be good, but the politics are tough. The most vocal arguments are about equity: the rich world caused the problem so why should the poor world pay to put it right?
Can the rich world do enough through its own actions and through its financial and technological support for the poor to persuade the poor to join in a global agreement? The present economic climate doesn't help, giving sceptics from the rich world arguments for not acting—or at least not acting now. And the sensitive issue of population stabilisation continues to slip off the agenda but is crucial to achieving real reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions.
These arguments need to be tackled head on. Climate change is global, and emissions know no frontiers. The necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity.
Coal-fired power stations and internal combustion engines pollute the atmosphere and worsen health, and deforestation destroys biodiversity, whereas saving energy helps hard-pressed household budgets, and drought-resistant crops help poor farmers. So even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agriculture technology is strong. Climate change makes it unanswerable.
The threat to health is especially evident in poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as the recent Lancet and University College London report shows. These countries are struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
Their poverty and lack of resources, infrastructure, and often governance, greatly increase their vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Warmer climate can lead to drought, pressure on resources (particularly water), migration, and conflict. The conflict in Darfur is as much about pressure on resources as the desert encroaches as about the internal politics of Sudan.
And the implications for the health of local populations are acute: on the spread and changing patterns of disease, notably water-borne diseases from inadequate and unclean supplies; on maternal and child mortality as basic health services collapse; and on malnutrition where food is scarce. And population stabilisation will not be achieved if, for want of resources, girls are not educated and contraceptives are unavailable.
Climate change is causing other kinds of extreme weather events too: storms, floods, and rising sea levels affecting coastal populations and islands. Every such event has adverse consequences for health. The poorer the country and its infrastructure, the worse are the consequences and the poorer the chances of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
Crucially for winning hearts and minds in richer countries, what's good for the climate is good for health. The measures needed to combat climate change coincide with those needed to ensure a healthier population and reduce the burden on health services. A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low-carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Opportunity, surely, not cost.
This is an opportunity too to advance health equity, which is increasingly seen as necessary for a healthy and happy society. If we take climate change seriously, it will require major changes to the way we live, reducing the gap between carbon rich and carbon poor within and between countries.
The Commission on Social Determinants of Health said that action to promote health must go well beyond health care. It must focus on the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and in the structural drivers of those conditions—inequities in power, money, and resources. These insights give further confirmation that what is good for the climate is good for health.
A successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilisation. It will require recognition by the rich countries of their obligations to the poor; and recognition by the poor countries that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution in which we all have to play a part.
It will require a new mindset: that the measures needed to mitigate the risks of climate change and adapt to its already inevitable effects provide an opportunity to achieve goals that are desirable in their own right – the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the poor countries and a healthier more equal society in the rich world and globally. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen.
The full-bore carbon pimps otherwise known as the Harper government have no interest in radical emission reductions. They say they do and they're lying through their teeth. Anyone who supports boosting Athabasca's environmental atrocity (hey Iggy boosters, that's your guy too) won't be going to Copenhagen with the midset the world needs to tackle this threat while there's still time. And there's no reason for you Dippers to get smug. Layton, with his "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach to carbon taxation, is every bit as much a sphincter as the others.
The problem is those who lay claim to the mantle of leaders in Canada don't see Copenhagen as an opportunity but as a problem, something to be handled, managed; a public perception challenge. If they have their way Copenhagen will be a failure. Understand this - Harper, Layton, Ignatieff are not on your side in this or your children's or your grandchildren's side. If they were, they would have been howling about this, loud and clear, long before now to get the Canadian public engaged on this threat. They haven't and that's all you need to know about where they stand.
"A Properly Resourced Counterinsurgency"
Eight years down a long, bloody road and now the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, is beginning to talk about troop increases for the Afghan War as necessary to establish, "a properly resourced counterinsurgency."
Hmmm, Admiral Mike, are you telling America and her NATO allies that the Pentagon has been goofing off ever since it first sent the Taliban packing in 2001? Actually, don't answer that. The question answers itself. The lousy state of Afghanistan today - the growing civil war, the rotten central government, the return of institutional religious fundamentalism, the oppression of Afghan women and children, the predation of the citizenry by corrupt cops and bureaucrats, the resurgence of the Northern Alliance warlords, the flourishing drug trade, the inadequate and unreliable Afghan army, the Taliban's return to Kandahar City and their infiltration of Kabul - answers the question, loud and clear.
Of course the one-track mind of "ol' grampa" hisself, Senator John McCain, was quick to sputter that any delay in sending more combat troops to Vietnam, er Afghanistan, would put American lives at risk. There's no fool like an old fool.
So desperate are the warhawks that they're even resorting to their old bag of tricks, the sleight of hand stuff they picked up in Iraq. The public doesn't have a clue that not one of the core issues that could detonate Iraq into chunks has been resolved, not one. That allows prevaricators like Mullen and his stooge, McCain, to call for the faux victory in Iraq to be repeated in Afghanistan. Oh please, not that!
I'm not sure that Mullen and McCain and their ilk are too stupid to understand the glaring differences between Afghanistan and Iraq. McCain perhaps but not Mullen. Either way there are far more differences than commonalities in the Afghan and the Iraq war. For example, Iraq was successful in establishing a more or less viable, central government within a few years. That's because Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, wasn't born out of the ashes of a civil war. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, is warlord territory and the power that has devolved to them ensures the central government will never be able to consolidate its hold on the country and that the national army will always be on the brink of fracturing into ethnic militias. Iraq has but two tribes - Arab and Kurd. Afghanistan has Pashtun, Baloch, Uzbek, Hazara, Tajik, Turkmen and a few others. The Afghan people have no recent tradition of secularism unlike the people of Iraq. The Iraqis weren't left to the mercies of drug lords and a narco-economy in the wake of the ouster of Saddam. The list goes on and on and on. It's like comparing an apple and a rock.
What Mullen and McCain won't say is that there will be no successful, viable Afghanistan until the tribalism that spawns the warlord malignancy is overcome, probably through a full-blown civil war and conquest, or that the Pentagon planners aren't even pretending to address this problem. They just want to go back and keep banging away at their increasingly irrelevant and ineffective military war, even as they continuously cede the political war to the steadily growing insurgent/resistance/rebel forces we lump together under the moniker "Taliban."
It's pretty obvious when their very best pitch for more troops presents no plan for ridding the country of the Fahims, Dostums, Hekmatyars, Gul Aghas and the subsequent thugs who will step up to fill their shoes that our military hucksters aren't even serious about winning this thing now, eight years after they began this fiasco. It's about as ridiculous as sending in the troops to prop up the New York and Chicago mob bosses against their rivals in Jersey and Miami.
When, after eight years, the best the Pentagon can come up with is a plea for "a properly resourced counterinsurgency" it's time to read between the lines. That's a thinly disguised admission of abject failure.
Hmmm, Admiral Mike, are you telling America and her NATO allies that the Pentagon has been goofing off ever since it first sent the Taliban packing in 2001? Actually, don't answer that. The question answers itself. The lousy state of Afghanistan today - the growing civil war, the rotten central government, the return of institutional religious fundamentalism, the oppression of Afghan women and children, the predation of the citizenry by corrupt cops and bureaucrats, the resurgence of the Northern Alliance warlords, the flourishing drug trade, the inadequate and unreliable Afghan army, the Taliban's return to Kandahar City and their infiltration of Kabul - answers the question, loud and clear.
Of course the one-track mind of "ol' grampa" hisself, Senator John McCain, was quick to sputter that any delay in sending more combat troops to Vietnam, er Afghanistan, would put American lives at risk. There's no fool like an old fool.
So desperate are the warhawks that they're even resorting to their old bag of tricks, the sleight of hand stuff they picked up in Iraq. The public doesn't have a clue that not one of the core issues that could detonate Iraq into chunks has been resolved, not one. That allows prevaricators like Mullen and his stooge, McCain, to call for the faux victory in Iraq to be repeated in Afghanistan. Oh please, not that!
I'm not sure that Mullen and McCain and their ilk are too stupid to understand the glaring differences between Afghanistan and Iraq. McCain perhaps but not Mullen. Either way there are far more differences than commonalities in the Afghan and the Iraq war. For example, Iraq was successful in establishing a more or less viable, central government within a few years. That's because Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, wasn't born out of the ashes of a civil war. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, is warlord territory and the power that has devolved to them ensures the central government will never be able to consolidate its hold on the country and that the national army will always be on the brink of fracturing into ethnic militias. Iraq has but two tribes - Arab and Kurd. Afghanistan has Pashtun, Baloch, Uzbek, Hazara, Tajik, Turkmen and a few others. The Afghan people have no recent tradition of secularism unlike the people of Iraq. The Iraqis weren't left to the mercies of drug lords and a narco-economy in the wake of the ouster of Saddam. The list goes on and on and on. It's like comparing an apple and a rock.
What Mullen and McCain won't say is that there will be no successful, viable Afghanistan until the tribalism that spawns the warlord malignancy is overcome, probably through a full-blown civil war and conquest, or that the Pentagon planners aren't even pretending to address this problem. They just want to go back and keep banging away at their increasingly irrelevant and ineffective military war, even as they continuously cede the political war to the steadily growing insurgent/resistance/rebel forces we lump together under the moniker "Taliban."
It's pretty obvious when their very best pitch for more troops presents no plan for ridding the country of the Fahims, Dostums, Hekmatyars, Gul Aghas and the subsequent thugs who will step up to fill their shoes that our military hucksters aren't even serious about winning this thing now, eight years after they began this fiasco. It's about as ridiculous as sending in the troops to prop up the New York and Chicago mob bosses against their rivals in Jersey and Miami.
When, after eight years, the best the Pentagon can come up with is a plea for "a properly resourced counterinsurgency" it's time to read between the lines. That's a thinly disguised admission of abject failure.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
A War of "Hearts & Minds" - Your Heart, Your Mind
The Afghan War is a struggle for hearts and minds and, above all else, it's your heart and your mind that matter.
We're told our Western forces are over there engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and that's sort of true but only sort of. The hearts and minds that will actually decide the issue are those found on Main Street, USA; Main Street, Canada; and Main Street, Europe.
The challenge facing Western forces in the Afghan War is to wrap things up before they lose the hearts and minds at home. And they've had a damned good run - eight years now - and they've got little or nothing to show for it.
Our forces have all the jets and helicopters and tanks and heavy artillery. They simply cannot be defeated, militarily defeated, by a few thousand rabble armed with Korean War-vintage assault rifles. Can't be done, won't be done. That's why our forces continue to fight our type of warfare, military war. We're happy with that and so is the other side because they're not fighting a military war, they're fighting a political war. It's their war, the political war, that's going to decide the issue - eventually - and all they have to do to win is survive long enough to wait us out.
The Pentagon and NATO know they're losing the war for hearts and minds at home. Public support at home is faltering and in danger of collapse. We, unlike the Afghan people, have democracies and that means when we're finally fed up with a war that's going nowhere, it's over.
Our leaders, political and military, promised us a great many things out of their Afghan War and they haven't delivered. They haven't delivered a democratic Afghanistan. They haven't delivered a humanitarian Afghanistan where the rights of women and children are upheld and protected. They haven't delivered an Afghanistan with a viable central government subject to the rule of law. They haven't driven out the insurgency or turned the Afghan people against it. They haven't delivered one damned thing they promised and, finally, people at home are beginning to call them on it.
The irony is that the politicians and generals actually had the hearts and minds of the people at home when they started this business and for years afterward as well. They had the hearts and minds at home when they set out to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Now they're winding up empty handed in Afghanistan and at home.
They try to keep this gin mill going by scolding dissenters with the line that failure is not an option. That's where they have it wrong, dead wrong. Failure isn't an "option," something we have somehow chosen. It is, instead, the result of their inability to prevail, the same result that inevitably befalls the losing side of any conflict. It's outrageous that these politicians and generals who have promised so much and delivered nothing attempt to set us up as choosing the inevitable result of their failure. They have failed the Afghan people, failed their own countries, failed their soldiers and now they have the gall to blame us for it. That's what you get from cowards, miscreants and reprobates.
We're told our Western forces are over there engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and that's sort of true but only sort of. The hearts and minds that will actually decide the issue are those found on Main Street, USA; Main Street, Canada; and Main Street, Europe.
The challenge facing Western forces in the Afghan War is to wrap things up before they lose the hearts and minds at home. And they've had a damned good run - eight years now - and they've got little or nothing to show for it.
Our forces have all the jets and helicopters and tanks and heavy artillery. They simply cannot be defeated, militarily defeated, by a few thousand rabble armed with Korean War-vintage assault rifles. Can't be done, won't be done. That's why our forces continue to fight our type of warfare, military war. We're happy with that and so is the other side because they're not fighting a military war, they're fighting a political war. It's their war, the political war, that's going to decide the issue - eventually - and all they have to do to win is survive long enough to wait us out.
The Pentagon and NATO know they're losing the war for hearts and minds at home. Public support at home is faltering and in danger of collapse. We, unlike the Afghan people, have democracies and that means when we're finally fed up with a war that's going nowhere, it's over.
Our leaders, political and military, promised us a great many things out of their Afghan War and they haven't delivered. They haven't delivered a democratic Afghanistan. They haven't delivered a humanitarian Afghanistan where the rights of women and children are upheld and protected. They haven't delivered an Afghanistan with a viable central government subject to the rule of law. They haven't driven out the insurgency or turned the Afghan people against it. They haven't delivered one damned thing they promised and, finally, people at home are beginning to call them on it.
The irony is that the politicians and generals actually had the hearts and minds of the people at home when they started this business and for years afterward as well. They had the hearts and minds at home when they set out to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Now they're winding up empty handed in Afghanistan and at home.
They try to keep this gin mill going by scolding dissenters with the line that failure is not an option. That's where they have it wrong, dead wrong. Failure isn't an "option," something we have somehow chosen. It is, instead, the result of their inability to prevail, the same result that inevitably befalls the losing side of any conflict. It's outrageous that these politicians and generals who have promised so much and delivered nothing attempt to set us up as choosing the inevitable result of their failure. They have failed the Afghan people, failed their own countries, failed their soldiers and now they have the gall to blame us for it. That's what you get from cowards, miscreants and reprobates.
Is Climate Migration a Universal Human Right?
Now this is a touchy subject for us in the West - climate migration - the mass migration of people from regions rendered less habitable or even uninhabitable by global warming-driven climate change.
Mark my words, this is where our humanitarian self-image is going to collide with reality.
Here's how the United Nations Humanitarian Affairs office puts it:
Specialists studying the likelihood of population movements due to climate change effects offer widely divergent predictions. But most agree policymakers must understand that migration is a vital coping mechanism for at-risk populations and must do more to help destination hubs prepare.
“Migration and mobility are always seen as exceptions but they are the norm. Mobility helps people get out of poverty,” said Cecelia Tacoli, senior researcher with London-based NGO the International Institute for Environment and Development. “If people affected by climate change lack access to resources or need to diversify their income sources, this lack should be [addressed] rather than be seen as a problem.”
In moderate to severe-climate change scenarios, mass migration invokes the 'overloaded lifeboat' dilemma. Do we allow the masses to clamber aboard the lifeboat and, if so, how many or do we simply beat them with the oars to save ourselves? You may find that a silly notion but it is expected to be addressed in the Pentagon's upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. Gwynne Dyer in his latest book, Climate Wars, says some American military leaders foresee a day when America will transform its border with Mexico into a free-fire kill zone.
And it's not just keeping Central and South Americans out that's driving this scenario. It's the prospect of an America struggling with its own, home grown mass displacement and resettlement due to coastal inundation and inland groundwater exhaustion. Even a moderate climate-change scenario could see America with its hands full simply accommodating internal climate migration.
It's the troubling realities of climate migration that will probably leave the West unwilling to discuss measures to actually facilitate or speed up migration. I think that's where we're going to find the real depth of our humanitarianism.
Mark my words, this is where our humanitarian self-image is going to collide with reality.
Here's how the United Nations Humanitarian Affairs office puts it:
Specialists studying the likelihood of population movements due to climate change effects offer widely divergent predictions. But most agree policymakers must understand that migration is a vital coping mechanism for at-risk populations and must do more to help destination hubs prepare.
“Migration and mobility are always seen as exceptions but they are the norm. Mobility helps people get out of poverty,” said Cecelia Tacoli, senior researcher with London-based NGO the International Institute for Environment and Development. “If people affected by climate change lack access to resources or need to diversify their income sources, this lack should be [addressed] rather than be seen as a problem.”
In moderate to severe-climate change scenarios, mass migration invokes the 'overloaded lifeboat' dilemma. Do we allow the masses to clamber aboard the lifeboat and, if so, how many or do we simply beat them with the oars to save ourselves? You may find that a silly notion but it is expected to be addressed in the Pentagon's upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. Gwynne Dyer in his latest book, Climate Wars, says some American military leaders foresee a day when America will transform its border with Mexico into a free-fire kill zone.
And it's not just keeping Central and South Americans out that's driving this scenario. It's the prospect of an America struggling with its own, home grown mass displacement and resettlement due to coastal inundation and inland groundwater exhaustion. Even a moderate climate-change scenario could see America with its hands full simply accommodating internal climate migration.
It's the troubling realities of climate migration that will probably leave the West unwilling to discuss measures to actually facilitate or speed up migration. I think that's where we're going to find the real depth of our humanitarianism.
Out of Sight/Out of Mind - the Misery of Gaza
Canadian politicians, including our own global peace expert Ignatieff, don't hesitate to weigh in on Gaza so long as the place is getting pummeled by the Israeli military. The rest of the time, who cares?
Iggy backed the Israeli side during the last onslaught, pretty much absolving the Israelis in advance for the war crimes that ensued. Now there's a dedicated man of peace for you. Lest there be any doubt about Ignatieff's appalling lack of judgment, the United Nations has just released its report into the tragedy, finding that both the Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity to boot. From The New York Times:
The four-member mission, led by Justice Richard Goldstone, a widely respected South African judge, also concluded that neither Israel nor the Palestinian groups had carried out any “credible investigations” into the conduct of the war. If that did not change within six months, the United Nations Security Council should refer the situation to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for possible prosecution, the panel concluded.
“The prolonged situation of impunity has created a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action,” the members said in their 574-page report on the war, during which some 1,200 Palestinians were killed, including at least several hundred civilians, and 13 Israelis died, 10 soldiers and 3 civilians.
It's too bad that Iggy chose to ignore what Liberals have long known - that there are almost never any clean hands in these conflicts. But there are dirty hands in abundance.
Today's Gaza is undergoing something akin to a medieval siege. We've probably all seen the movies where the attackers surround the castle, cutting off food and water to the defenders inside until they surrender or die. Welcome to Gaza, 2009.
The Gazans too are surrounded, cut off - by Israel - and the siege is strangling the public's access to drinking water. From the United Nations Humanitarian Affairs office:
Unless urgent action is taken, the supply of water fit for human use in the Gaza Strip will be depleted in 5-10 years, according to the Gaza Coastal Municipal Water Utility (CMWU) and UN agencies working there. Only 5-10 percent of groundwater - the most important supply source for human use (domestic, agricultural and industrial) in Gaza - yields potable water, according to CMWU.
...The poor quality of groundwater is due to over-extraction from the aquifer and this has allowed seawater intrusion - hence the high salinity of Gaza’s groundwater. Much of it is unfit for human use.
Tap water in Gaza is known to be very salty and undrinkable. Poor groundwater quality can also be attributed to pollution from wastewater seepage and the infiltration of agricultural fertilizers, according to a World Bank report released in April.
The decrease in useable water reserves has also been linked to climatic changes, such as lower rainfall, which have slowed the recharge rate of the aquifer. Other factors are a rapid population growth and increasing suburban sprawl, leaving little space for rainwater catchment areas.
...“Unlike the West Bank, Gaza is ‘downstream’ of the portion of the aquifer that lies beneath Israel, with lateral groundwater flows coming from Israel into the Gaza portion of the aquifer,” Ghannam said. “The groundwater underneath Gaza is becoming limited due to Israel’s construction of trap wells [about 27 wells] inside Israel, along Gaza’s eastern political border, siphoning water supplies from the aquifer before they reach Gaza.”
According to the Israeli Water Authority, the Gaza aquifer has no impact on Israel and Israel does not prevent the flow of surface water or groundwater to the Gaza aquifer. Blockade Since 2005, Gaza’s water supply has also been affected by restricted access to power, fuel and spare parts, the World Bank said.
Equipment and supplies needed for the construction, maintenance and operation of water and sanitation facilities have been denied entry to Gaza under the more that two-year Israeli blockade of the enclave, tightened after Hamas seized power in June 2007. Israel says that for security reasons it cannot allow certain materials into Gaza.
Gaza’s wastewater infrastructure, which provides partial and intermittent water treatment, is also in desperate need of repair. Most sewage goes raw to lagoons and the sea, or seeps through the soil and reaches the aquifer, according to the World Bank report.
Of course a lot of these claims come from that known terrorist sympathizer, the World Bank. It's incredible. We sit mute while Israel maintains the siege of Gaza and then condemn the Gazans if they retaliate with a handful of hapless rockets.
Iggy backed the Israeli side during the last onslaught, pretty much absolving the Israelis in advance for the war crimes that ensued. Now there's a dedicated man of peace for you. Lest there be any doubt about Ignatieff's appalling lack of judgment, the United Nations has just released its report into the tragedy, finding that both the Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity to boot. From The New York Times:
The four-member mission, led by Justice Richard Goldstone, a widely respected South African judge, also concluded that neither Israel nor the Palestinian groups had carried out any “credible investigations” into the conduct of the war. If that did not change within six months, the United Nations Security Council should refer the situation to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for possible prosecution, the panel concluded.
“The prolonged situation of impunity has created a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action,” the members said in their 574-page report on the war, during which some 1,200 Palestinians were killed, including at least several hundred civilians, and 13 Israelis died, 10 soldiers and 3 civilians.
It's too bad that Iggy chose to ignore what Liberals have long known - that there are almost never any clean hands in these conflicts. But there are dirty hands in abundance.
Today's Gaza is undergoing something akin to a medieval siege. We've probably all seen the movies where the attackers surround the castle, cutting off food and water to the defenders inside until they surrender or die. Welcome to Gaza, 2009.
The Gazans too are surrounded, cut off - by Israel - and the siege is strangling the public's access to drinking water. From the United Nations Humanitarian Affairs office:
Unless urgent action is taken, the supply of water fit for human use in the Gaza Strip will be depleted in 5-10 years, according to the Gaza Coastal Municipal Water Utility (CMWU) and UN agencies working there. Only 5-10 percent of groundwater - the most important supply source for human use (domestic, agricultural and industrial) in Gaza - yields potable water, according to CMWU.
...The poor quality of groundwater is due to over-extraction from the aquifer and this has allowed seawater intrusion - hence the high salinity of Gaza’s groundwater. Much of it is unfit for human use.
Tap water in Gaza is known to be very salty and undrinkable. Poor groundwater quality can also be attributed to pollution from wastewater seepage and the infiltration of agricultural fertilizers, according to a World Bank report released in April.
The decrease in useable water reserves has also been linked to climatic changes, such as lower rainfall, which have slowed the recharge rate of the aquifer. Other factors are a rapid population growth and increasing suburban sprawl, leaving little space for rainwater catchment areas.
...“Unlike the West Bank, Gaza is ‘downstream’ of the portion of the aquifer that lies beneath Israel, with lateral groundwater flows coming from Israel into the Gaza portion of the aquifer,” Ghannam said. “The groundwater underneath Gaza is becoming limited due to Israel’s construction of trap wells [about 27 wells] inside Israel, along Gaza’s eastern political border, siphoning water supplies from the aquifer before they reach Gaza.”
According to the Israeli Water Authority, the Gaza aquifer has no impact on Israel and Israel does not prevent the flow of surface water or groundwater to the Gaza aquifer. Blockade Since 2005, Gaza’s water supply has also been affected by restricted access to power, fuel and spare parts, the World Bank said.
Equipment and supplies needed for the construction, maintenance and operation of water and sanitation facilities have been denied entry to Gaza under the more that two-year Israeli blockade of the enclave, tightened after Hamas seized power in June 2007. Israel says that for security reasons it cannot allow certain materials into Gaza.
Gaza’s wastewater infrastructure, which provides partial and intermittent water treatment, is also in desperate need of repair. Most sewage goes raw to lagoons and the sea, or seeps through the soil and reaches the aquifer, according to the World Bank report.
Of course a lot of these claims come from that known terrorist sympathizer, the World Bank. It's incredible. We sit mute while Israel maintains the siege of Gaza and then condemn the Gazans if they retaliate with a handful of hapless rockets.
Poor Jack, On His Knees and Steve Won't Even Give Him the Sweat Off His...
I may be no fan of the IgLibs but Layton & Company's endless sanctimonious castigation of the Libs for propping up SHarper was a bit grating. That's why it was pretty rich to see Moustache Jack bend over and beg Steve to have his way with him if only he will forestall an election the NDP so obviously fears so very much.
I'm sure you Dippers must be cringing at the sight and after all the 'holier than thou' ridicule you've thrown out for so long it looks so awesome on you. The image of a supplicant Jack volunteering to take one for the team pretty much says it all. He didn't pass up an opportunity to berate the Libs for not standing up to Harper until they did and then he immediately offered up himself and his party to be Harper's parliamentary bitch.
It all sounds so scripted. That's the way it sounded to McLean's magazine too which described the plotline thusly:
...this is the part where Jack Layton notices his poll numbers tanking so he climbs into bed with Stephen Harper, a man that for years he has routinely pilloried, condemned and otherwise not liked very much. Striving to create an aura of principled crisis, Jack hogs the political limelight under the pretense of advancing public policy and societal justice, though pretty much everyone attributes his abrupt aboutface to saving his own political bacon. Jack also talks about kitchen tables. Ultimately, Jack votes with a government to which, barely 24 hours earlier, he was philosophically, intellectually, ideologically, morally and possibly even sartorially opposed. He continues to support the government until he is able to crudely manufacture a moment of betrayal that allows him to theatrically withdraw his backing, preferably while surrounded by autoworkers/the unemployed/kitchen tables.
Bye, bye Dippers. You had a good run while it lasted.
I'm sure you Dippers must be cringing at the sight and after all the 'holier than thou' ridicule you've thrown out for so long it looks so awesome on you. The image of a supplicant Jack volunteering to take one for the team pretty much says it all. He didn't pass up an opportunity to berate the Libs for not standing up to Harper until they did and then he immediately offered up himself and his party to be Harper's parliamentary bitch.
It all sounds so scripted. That's the way it sounded to McLean's magazine too which described the plotline thusly:
...this is the part where Jack Layton notices his poll numbers tanking so he climbs into bed with Stephen Harper, a man that for years he has routinely pilloried, condemned and otherwise not liked very much. Striving to create an aura of principled crisis, Jack hogs the political limelight under the pretense of advancing public policy and societal justice, though pretty much everyone attributes his abrupt aboutface to saving his own political bacon. Jack also talks about kitchen tables. Ultimately, Jack votes with a government to which, barely 24 hours earlier, he was philosophically, intellectually, ideologically, morally and possibly even sartorially opposed. He continues to support the government until he is able to crudely manufacture a moment of betrayal that allows him to theatrically withdraw his backing, preferably while surrounded by autoworkers/the unemployed/kitchen tables.
Bye, bye Dippers. You had a good run while it lasted.
Monday, September 14, 2009
A New Type of Economics for a World in Trouble
Whether we like it or not, traditional economic theory is bound to go the way of the Great Auk. It can't last because of the insurmountable hurdles that now confront it. We're running out of stuff - raw materials, energy, water, air, you name it. We're running out of time.
Now French president Nicolas Sarkozy is mulling over a report from leading economists claiming that gross domestic product {GDP} is an insufficient standard for determining economic health and should be expanded to include measures of sustainability and human well-being.
And just what nutbars came up with this radical notion? Well, how about Nobel prize economists Joe Stiglitz of Columbia University and Amartya Sen of Harvard, along with Jean-Paul Fitoussi, a professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. According to The New York Times, these guys assert, "that economic growth had come to be seen as an end in itself, rather than as the means for increasing human happiness. "
What is of “particular concern is when narrow measures of market performance are confused with broader measures of welfare,” the authors said in the report. “What we measure affects what we do; and if our measurements are flawed, decisions may be distorted. Policies should be aimed at increasing societal welfare, not G.D.P.”
The report also notes that “an excessive focus on G.D.P. metrics” contributed to the onset of the financial crisis, as policy makers cheered rising economic growth while other data, like those that showed the increasing and unsustainable indebtedness of households and businesses, were overlooked.
Mr. Sarkozy, professing his dissatisfaction with standard economic measures, created the commission in February 2008, charging the economists with identifying the limits of gross domestic product “as an indicator of economic performance and social progress,” and asked them to consider alternatives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/business/global/15gdp.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Now French president Nicolas Sarkozy is mulling over a report from leading economists claiming that gross domestic product {GDP} is an insufficient standard for determining economic health and should be expanded to include measures of sustainability and human well-being.
And just what nutbars came up with this radical notion? Well, how about Nobel prize economists Joe Stiglitz of Columbia University and Amartya Sen of Harvard, along with Jean-Paul Fitoussi, a professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. According to The New York Times, these guys assert, "that economic growth had come to be seen as an end in itself, rather than as the means for increasing human happiness. "
What is of “particular concern is when narrow measures of market performance are confused with broader measures of welfare,” the authors said in the report. “What we measure affects what we do; and if our measurements are flawed, decisions may be distorted. Policies should be aimed at increasing societal welfare, not G.D.P.”
The report also notes that “an excessive focus on G.D.P. metrics” contributed to the onset of the financial crisis, as policy makers cheered rising economic growth while other data, like those that showed the increasing and unsustainable indebtedness of households and businesses, were overlooked.
Mr. Sarkozy, professing his dissatisfaction with standard economic measures, created the commission in February 2008, charging the economists with identifying the limits of gross domestic product “as an indicator of economic performance and social progress,” and asked them to consider alternatives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/business/global/15gdp.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
We've Got'Em Right Where We Want'Em
One of the most bedeviling aspects of counterinsurgency is locating the bad guys. You have to set up outposts at strategic points, run patrols through suspect areas and even recce the ground from unmanned aerial drones. Very time consuming, very resource intensive and, with the spread of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), very dangerous.
So you would think NATO forces in Kandahar would be ecstatic to learn that the Taliban have found a spot and they're staying put, taking over as it were. We don't have to chase them all over the countryside any more. Best of all, the bad guys are setting up shop just 16-kilometres from the gate to our main base over there.
The Taliban are taking control of Kandahar City.
But that's the capital of Kandahar province, isn't it? Yep. And that's where this whole Taliban movement began isn't it? Check. And it's right under the noses of the Western forces in that province, isn't it? Roger. So, now that we know where they are and now that we know they're taking over the provincial capital, a city of 800,000 people, we're going to mount up and drive them out, right? Not so much.
You see, even though we've got all those jet strike fighters and attack helicopters and tanks and artillery stationed just 16-kliks away, we don't have remotely enough troops - Afghan or Western - to drive the Taliban out of Kandahar City. From the Washington Post:
The slow and quiet fall of Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, poses a complex new challenge for the NATO effort to stabilize Afghanistan. It is factoring prominently into discussions between Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the overall U.S. and NATO commander, and his advisers about how many more troops to seek from Washington.
"Kandahar is at the top of the list," one senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan said. "We simply do not have enough resources to address the challenges there."
Kandahar in many ways is a microcosm of the challenges the United States faces in stabilizing Afghanistan. The city is filled with ineffective government officials and police officers whom the governor calls looters and kidnappers. Unemployment is rampant. Municipal services are nonexistent. Reconstruction projects have not changed many lives. A lack of NATO forces allowed militants free rein.
But it is also unique. It is bigger and more complicated than any other place in southern Afghanistan -- and there is a growing belief among military commanders that it is more important to the overall counterinsurgency campaign than any other part of the country.
"Kandahar means Afghanistan," said the governor, Tooryalai Wesa. "The history of Afghanistan, the politics of Afghanistan, was always determined from Kandahar, and once again, it will be determined from Kandahar."
...Taliban fighters have opted not to drive around in their trademark white pickup trucks, clad in black turbans. For now, they operate under the cover of darkness, prosecuting their intimidation campaign with correspondence and traffic checkpoints aimed at making it clear to residents that they are everywhere. Some NATO officials think the insurgents are trying to so weaken the government, security forces and relief agencies that they can one day assert full control over a city they are already dominating.
"Nobody in this city feels safe," said Ahmad, who now spends his days at home. "The Taliban do not show their faces during the day, but everyone knows they are in charge."
...When Canadian troops conducted repeated missions to clear militants from areas around the city, there never were enough forces to stay to keep insurgents from returning. Canada did not have the resources to maintain a large presence in the city: That was left to the local police.
It is the corruption of the police -- and that alleged of senior government officials -- that many Kandaharis say has been the principal reason for the Taliban's resurgence. Just as they did in the 1990s, residents say the Taliban is appealing not to a popular desire for religious fanaticism but to a demand for good governance. Part of the problem is that the police are ill-trained and ill-paid, driving them to graft. Another contributor: local leaders who have created a culture of impunity.
Chief among them, several Afghans contend, is the chairman of the Kandahar province council, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's younger brother. He is alleged to have links to the opium trade -- a charge he has denied -- and is accused of other misdeeds, including engaging in ballot-box fraud in support of his brother in the Aug. 20 presidential election.
So, if the best thing the Taliban have going for them is the corruption widespread among Afghan officials and security forces, why are we propping up the very people and organizations that are driving the locals into the arms of our enemies?
And one more question. What made Rick Hillier, the Big Cod, General Swagger himself, believe he could control Kandahar with a miniscule contingent just 2,500 strong? As far as I'm concerned that boy has a lot of 'splainin to do.
So you would think NATO forces in Kandahar would be ecstatic to learn that the Taliban have found a spot and they're staying put, taking over as it were. We don't have to chase them all over the countryside any more. Best of all, the bad guys are setting up shop just 16-kilometres from the gate to our main base over there.
The Taliban are taking control of Kandahar City.
But that's the capital of Kandahar province, isn't it? Yep. And that's where this whole Taliban movement began isn't it? Check. And it's right under the noses of the Western forces in that province, isn't it? Roger. So, now that we know where they are and now that we know they're taking over the provincial capital, a city of 800,000 people, we're going to mount up and drive them out, right? Not so much.
You see, even though we've got all those jet strike fighters and attack helicopters and tanks and artillery stationed just 16-kliks away, we don't have remotely enough troops - Afghan or Western - to drive the Taliban out of Kandahar City. From the Washington Post:
The slow and quiet fall of Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, poses a complex new challenge for the NATO effort to stabilize Afghanistan. It is factoring prominently into discussions between Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the overall U.S. and NATO commander, and his advisers about how many more troops to seek from Washington.
"Kandahar is at the top of the list," one senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan said. "We simply do not have enough resources to address the challenges there."
Kandahar in many ways is a microcosm of the challenges the United States faces in stabilizing Afghanistan. The city is filled with ineffective government officials and police officers whom the governor calls looters and kidnappers. Unemployment is rampant. Municipal services are nonexistent. Reconstruction projects have not changed many lives. A lack of NATO forces allowed militants free rein.
But it is also unique. It is bigger and more complicated than any other place in southern Afghanistan -- and there is a growing belief among military commanders that it is more important to the overall counterinsurgency campaign than any other part of the country.
"Kandahar means Afghanistan," said the governor, Tooryalai Wesa. "The history of Afghanistan, the politics of Afghanistan, was always determined from Kandahar, and once again, it will be determined from Kandahar."
...Taliban fighters have opted not to drive around in their trademark white pickup trucks, clad in black turbans. For now, they operate under the cover of darkness, prosecuting their intimidation campaign with correspondence and traffic checkpoints aimed at making it clear to residents that they are everywhere. Some NATO officials think the insurgents are trying to so weaken the government, security forces and relief agencies that they can one day assert full control over a city they are already dominating.
"Nobody in this city feels safe," said Ahmad, who now spends his days at home. "The Taliban do not show their faces during the day, but everyone knows they are in charge."
...When Canadian troops conducted repeated missions to clear militants from areas around the city, there never were enough forces to stay to keep insurgents from returning. Canada did not have the resources to maintain a large presence in the city: That was left to the local police.
It is the corruption of the police -- and that alleged of senior government officials -- that many Kandaharis say has been the principal reason for the Taliban's resurgence. Just as they did in the 1990s, residents say the Taliban is appealing not to a popular desire for religious fanaticism but to a demand for good governance. Part of the problem is that the police are ill-trained and ill-paid, driving them to graft. Another contributor: local leaders who have created a culture of impunity.
Chief among them, several Afghans contend, is the chairman of the Kandahar province council, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's younger brother. He is alleged to have links to the opium trade -- a charge he has denied -- and is accused of other misdeeds, including engaging in ballot-box fraud in support of his brother in the Aug. 20 presidential election.
So, if the best thing the Taliban have going for them is the corruption widespread among Afghan officials and security forces, why are we propping up the very people and organizations that are driving the locals into the arms of our enemies?
And one more question. What made Rick Hillier, the Big Cod, General Swagger himself, believe he could control Kandahar with a miniscule contingent just 2,500 strong? As far as I'm concerned that boy has a lot of 'splainin to do.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Father of the "Green Revolution" Dies
Nobel prize winner, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, knew that his work - harnessed incorrectly - could help destroy mankind. Before he died in Dallas last night, he saw his warning ignored.
Dr. Borlaug received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for advances in plant breeding that enabled desperate regions of the world to feed themselves.
“More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world,” the Nobel committee said in presenting him with the Peace Prize. “We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.”
...The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it had solved. Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had made them necessary.
“If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species,” he declared.
Today the Green Revolution is beginning to backfire in India which created decades of food surpluses and runaway population growth by adopting the new crops. That, in turn, required the use of massive quantities of fertilizer and even more massive supplies of groundwater. The soil has become so exhausted by overcultivation that now Indian farmers require twice the original amounts of fertilizers while, at the same time, they're beginning to deplete their groundwater resources just as precipitation patterns are shifting due to global warming.
Dr. Borlaug received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for advances in plant breeding that enabled desperate regions of the world to feed themselves.
“More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world,” the Nobel committee said in presenting him with the Peace Prize. “We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.”
...The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it had solved. Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had made them necessary.
“If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species,” he declared.
Today the Green Revolution is beginning to backfire in India which created decades of food surpluses and runaway population growth by adopting the new crops. That, in turn, required the use of massive quantities of fertilizer and even more massive supplies of groundwater. The soil has become so exhausted by overcultivation that now Indian farmers require twice the original amounts of fertilizers while, at the same time, they're beginning to deplete their groundwater resources just as precipitation patterns are shifting due to global warming.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Of Course It's Not Vietnam.
Afghanistan just seems to be going in the same direction as South Vietnam.
Some of you may recall Nixon's policy of Vietnamization of his war. By that he meant handing it off to the local forces to clear the way for withdrawal of American combat forces.
What's being called Afghanization is being pushed by the British, French and German governments who are eager to have the Taliban problem handed over to the Afghan National Army. According to Asia Times Online, Washington and NATO are pushing back:
...NATO's new secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave away the mood in Washington. He said, "The public discourse has started to go in the wrong direction ... We must stay in Afghanistan as long as necessary, and we will stay as long as necessary. Let no one think that a run for the exits is an option. It is not."
...Washington's priority is that the Taliban are destabilizing Central Asia, the North Caucasus as well as China's Xinjiang province and subverting the eastern regions of Iran. A self-serving security paradigm has developed whereby regional instability is threatened by the war, which, in turn, serves to justify the prolonged, indefinite NATO presence in Afghanistan. Clearly, "Afghanization" doesn't fit into this paradigm.
The US's major NATO allies are beginning to catch up with the paradox, finally, that while the growing risk of the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban becoming a war by foreigners against Afghans must be reduced, "Afghanization" doesn't suit the US objectives.
Old Europeans see no reason why their youth should go and die in the Hindu Kush mountains to subserve the geopolitical agenda regarding NATO expansion. Rasmussen's outburst shows the hour of truth has come.
Some of you may recall Nixon's policy of Vietnamization of his war. By that he meant handing it off to the local forces to clear the way for withdrawal of American combat forces.
What's being called Afghanization is being pushed by the British, French and German governments who are eager to have the Taliban problem handed over to the Afghan National Army. According to Asia Times Online, Washington and NATO are pushing back:
...NATO's new secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave away the mood in Washington. He said, "The public discourse has started to go in the wrong direction ... We must stay in Afghanistan as long as necessary, and we will stay as long as necessary. Let no one think that a run for the exits is an option. It is not."
...Washington's priority is that the Taliban are destabilizing Central Asia, the North Caucasus as well as China's Xinjiang province and subverting the eastern regions of Iran. A self-serving security paradigm has developed whereby regional instability is threatened by the war, which, in turn, serves to justify the prolonged, indefinite NATO presence in Afghanistan. Clearly, "Afghanization" doesn't fit into this paradigm.
The US's major NATO allies are beginning to catch up with the paradox, finally, that while the growing risk of the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban becoming a war by foreigners against Afghans must be reduced, "Afghanization" doesn't suit the US objectives.
Old Europeans see no reason why their youth should go and die in the Hindu Kush mountains to subserve the geopolitical agenda regarding NATO expansion. Rasmussen's outburst shows the hour of truth has come.
The Word for the 21st Century - "Inure"
In pretty much any job you take on you pick up a few words, bits of an occupational lexicon. In the law business one of my favourites was "inure" and I expect it's going to become the non-rallying cry of the 21st century.
In case you're not familiar with it, "inure" means to become toughened to something undesirable by habitual exposure to it. Get exposed to something enough and you may just stop caring.
"Inure" came to mind this morning as I pondered a story about Iraqi farmers being driven off their land by the sea as tidal waters begin moving up the Euphrates river. Fresh water flows down the Tigris and Euphrates normally hold the salt water at bay, constantly pushing it back into the Persian Gulf. However the drought that has swept Turkey, Syria and Iraq has caused a major drop in the volume of freshwater passing through these rivers. That, in turn, has allowed salt water from the Persian Gulf to move further upstream.
The brackish water makes agriculture very difficult, if not impossible. The salt in the blended salt/fresh water collects in the soil, rendering it sterile in short order (think Hannibal, Rome, Carthage and salting of the farm fields). The saltwater also spreads into the local groundwater and can make it also unusable.
This week the surging Gulf saltwater drove 2,000 Iraqis off their land. There'll be more to follow, plenty more and they won't just be in Mesopotamia either. Freshwater flows are threatened throughout South Asia, East Asia, northern Africa (especially the Nile delta) and elsewhere. Often the affected country's key agricultural regions are in coastal areas, especially river deltas.
Added to the disruption of freshwater flows is the problem of rising sea levels caused by global warming. This will impact every coastal region around the world. It's already driving farmers off their land in Bangladesh and the more the seas rise, the greater the impact.
Now if you're a Bangladeshi or Egyptian or Iraqi farmer it may be pretty tough becoming inured to your plight but they don't matter. It's you who matters - the peoples of the industrialized world. It's the First World nations that are going to have to trim their sails, are going to have to help the developing and Third World cope with the impacts of global warming that we pretty much visited on them. But if we're going to do that, we're going to have to become - and remain - alarmed enough to demand our governments act and, instead, I'm betting we'll become inured to all this suffering instead.
These little, two paragraph, anecdotal accounts about people in places we really don't much care about are going to become repetitive, tedious and ultimately anecdotal. As we glance through the news reports and quickly move on to sports section or the TV listings, we'll become inured or toughened to this distant unpleasantness. It will become the new "normal" and we all know that we can't change normal. Besides, we'll have far too many problems on our own plate by then to worry about overpopulated regions on the far side of the world.
Whether by necessity or choice, we lucky ones are destined to become inured to the fate that befalls the unlucky ones.
In case you're not familiar with it, "inure" means to become toughened to something undesirable by habitual exposure to it. Get exposed to something enough and you may just stop caring.
"Inure" came to mind this morning as I pondered a story about Iraqi farmers being driven off their land by the sea as tidal waters begin moving up the Euphrates river. Fresh water flows down the Tigris and Euphrates normally hold the salt water at bay, constantly pushing it back into the Persian Gulf. However the drought that has swept Turkey, Syria and Iraq has caused a major drop in the volume of freshwater passing through these rivers. That, in turn, has allowed salt water from the Persian Gulf to move further upstream.
The brackish water makes agriculture very difficult, if not impossible. The salt in the blended salt/fresh water collects in the soil, rendering it sterile in short order (think Hannibal, Rome, Carthage and salting of the farm fields). The saltwater also spreads into the local groundwater and can make it also unusable.
This week the surging Gulf saltwater drove 2,000 Iraqis off their land. There'll be more to follow, plenty more and they won't just be in Mesopotamia either. Freshwater flows are threatened throughout South Asia, East Asia, northern Africa (especially the Nile delta) and elsewhere. Often the affected country's key agricultural regions are in coastal areas, especially river deltas.
Added to the disruption of freshwater flows is the problem of rising sea levels caused by global warming. This will impact every coastal region around the world. It's already driving farmers off their land in Bangladesh and the more the seas rise, the greater the impact.
Now if you're a Bangladeshi or Egyptian or Iraqi farmer it may be pretty tough becoming inured to your plight but they don't matter. It's you who matters - the peoples of the industrialized world. It's the First World nations that are going to have to trim their sails, are going to have to help the developing and Third World cope with the impacts of global warming that we pretty much visited on them. But if we're going to do that, we're going to have to become - and remain - alarmed enough to demand our governments act and, instead, I'm betting we'll become inured to all this suffering instead.
These little, two paragraph, anecdotal accounts about people in places we really don't much care about are going to become repetitive, tedious and ultimately anecdotal. As we glance through the news reports and quickly move on to sports section or the TV listings, we'll become inured or toughened to this distant unpleasantness. It will become the new "normal" and we all know that we can't change normal. Besides, we'll have far too many problems on our own plate by then to worry about overpopulated regions on the far side of the world.
Whether by necessity or choice, we lucky ones are destined to become inured to the fate that befalls the unlucky ones.
Friday, September 11, 2009
World's Oldest Person Dies - Again!
I'm not sure that "World's Oldest Person" is a title anyone should really envy because, gosh darn it, the honour changes hands so often. This time it was Gertrude Baines of Los Angeles who checked out at a ripe 115.
Gertie actually held on to the title pretty well. She's had it since January when another 115-year old woman, Maria de Jesus of Portugal vacated the office.
Today's oldest person in the world is the sprightly, 114 year old Kama Chinen of Japan. The all time record remains with the late Jeanne Calment of France who logged 122 and a half years before she joined the Choir Invisible back in 1997.
I read an article a day or two back that claimed scientists are convinced that the first human who will live to 150-years of age is already among us. That's what we need - another mouth to feed for a century and a half!
Gertie actually held on to the title pretty well. She's had it since January when another 115-year old woman, Maria de Jesus of Portugal vacated the office.
Today's oldest person in the world is the sprightly, 114 year old Kama Chinen of Japan. The all time record remains with the late Jeanne Calment of France who logged 122 and a half years before she joined the Choir Invisible back in 1997.
I read an article a day or two back that claimed scientists are convinced that the first human who will live to 150-years of age is already among us. That's what we need - another mouth to feed for a century and a half!
Fight Global Warming - Use Condoms
An enlightening study out of the London School of Economics. Condoms are a much better investment than biofuel. The study shows that a $7 expenditure on basic family planning can save over a tonne of carbon emissions compared to a market cost of $32 to remove that tonne of emissions. Funded by a London based environmental group, the Optimum Population Trust, the study highlights the global warming impacts of overpopulation.
The bottom line? "From the cost-benefit analysis, it has been found that family planning (considered purely as a method of reducing future CO2 emissions) is more cost-effective than most low-carbon technologies."
While the report focuses mainly on carbon emissions, the same investment in contraception will have similar benefits in other areas including desertification, deforestation, species extinction not to mention air, sea and soil pollution.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Morning After
Despite all the outbursts of optimism the American economic crisis is anything but over. Debt, debt and more debt that, sooner or later, somebody has to pay.
McClatchey Newspapers proclaims that America's consumer economy is dead. For an economy more reliant than most on consumer spending that's bad news of the lasting kind. US retail sales could slump in the order of a mere trillion dollars this year.
The early impact of the worst recession since the 1930s pushed median incomes down, forced almost 40 million more people into poverty and left more Americans without health care in 2008, according to new annual survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Poor people, working people, blacks, Hispanics and children bore a disproportionate share of the hardship. The new figures, however, likely understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of nation's job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey.
The poor performances of key economic and social indicators come as little surprise, since the recession officially began in December 2007 and continued to create economic carnage for 18 months before appearing to bottom out over the summer.
_ Along the way, the nation's real median income — the point at which half the nation earns less and half more — fell 3.6 percent from $52,163 in 2007 to $50,303 in 2008. That was the first such decline in three years and the worst in the first year of any recession since Census Bureau began collecting the data during World War II, said Lawrence F. Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University.
The news service reports that Americans are beginning to do something they've not done for quite some while - they're saving or at least trying to save. During the fiercest of America's Mardi Gras days, Lewis Lapham wrote that his country's undoing began during the Nixon years when Americans came to equate wealth with virtue. Today virtue is being seen as frugality. Now that's a healthy change in many ways but it will take some time before it sorts itself out in the American economy.
In June my partner and I rode our motorcycles along the Pacific coast highway down to southern California. We went to some fabulous places, the sort that made home look positively plebian. I asked her to look around, take it all in, because she was looking at something that was about to slip away, America at its absolute zenith. It was going because it was in no small part illusion, the product of borrowed money, indulgence and a rapacious appetite for more. We were looking at the fiscal equivalent of a Hollywood back lot.
You can't build wealth on debt. Wealth is fragile and transitory. Your stock in Lehman Brothers goes from huge to zero almost overnight. A house that may have sold for a million dollars last year could be worth half a million next year. What is solid as concrete, however, is debt. The house may lose half its value but the debt associated with acquiring that house doesn't lose a penny of its value. In relative terms, it grows and worsens.
This isn't a morality lesson but a warning that it's going to take America a very long time to recover because it isn't just pulling itself out of the downturn that challenges the American people and their society, it's redressing nearly three decades of excess that will make or break the United States. More than a year before the meltdown America's last Comptroller General was telling anyone who would listen that the federal government's debt and unfunded liabilities worked out to $480,000 per household and that was before the trillions of borrowed money infused into the US economy by Bush and Obama.
Barack Obama hasn't salvaged the American economy, he's merely kept it from utterly collapsing, in itself a Herculean achievement. But that has necessitated adding a huge layer of new debt onto a pre-existing mountain of accumulated debt. It was a good thing to do and a reasonable amount of that money will be recovered but Washington hasn't begun to address how to bring the nation's books into order.
Despite their decadal mass psychosis that took hold in the Reagan years there is an abiding strength in the United States and the American people that may just help restore their nation and their society. It certainly won't be easy. America has to deal with fiscal and social and cultural imbalances at the same time as the entire world is confronted with truly existential environmental, energy and security threats.
As Canadians we're far too tightly tied to the United States and we'll ride the swells of its recovery and its setbacks. It's probably far too late to do much about that now but it's clear we're in for a hell of a ride.
And then there's that cheap fraud, Stephen Harper. This is the guy who castigated his own country and his countrymen for being so backward as not to embrace the very mentality that has laid America so low today. The man positively worshiped the very worst of American madness. At least the prime ministerial punk has figured out to stow that nonsense.
McClatchey Newspapers proclaims that America's consumer economy is dead. For an economy more reliant than most on consumer spending that's bad news of the lasting kind. US retail sales could slump in the order of a mere trillion dollars this year.
The early impact of the worst recession since the 1930s pushed median incomes down, forced almost 40 million more people into poverty and left more Americans without health care in 2008, according to new annual survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Poor people, working people, blacks, Hispanics and children bore a disproportionate share of the hardship. The new figures, however, likely understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of nation's job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey.
The poor performances of key economic and social indicators come as little surprise, since the recession officially began in December 2007 and continued to create economic carnage for 18 months before appearing to bottom out over the summer.
_ Along the way, the nation's real median income — the point at which half the nation earns less and half more — fell 3.6 percent from $52,163 in 2007 to $50,303 in 2008. That was the first such decline in three years and the worst in the first year of any recession since Census Bureau began collecting the data during World War II, said Lawrence F. Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University.
The news service reports that Americans are beginning to do something they've not done for quite some while - they're saving or at least trying to save. During the fiercest of America's Mardi Gras days, Lewis Lapham wrote that his country's undoing began during the Nixon years when Americans came to equate wealth with virtue. Today virtue is being seen as frugality. Now that's a healthy change in many ways but it will take some time before it sorts itself out in the American economy.
In June my partner and I rode our motorcycles along the Pacific coast highway down to southern California. We went to some fabulous places, the sort that made home look positively plebian. I asked her to look around, take it all in, because she was looking at something that was about to slip away, America at its absolute zenith. It was going because it was in no small part illusion, the product of borrowed money, indulgence and a rapacious appetite for more. We were looking at the fiscal equivalent of a Hollywood back lot.
You can't build wealth on debt. Wealth is fragile and transitory. Your stock in Lehman Brothers goes from huge to zero almost overnight. A house that may have sold for a million dollars last year could be worth half a million next year. What is solid as concrete, however, is debt. The house may lose half its value but the debt associated with acquiring that house doesn't lose a penny of its value. In relative terms, it grows and worsens.
This isn't a morality lesson but a warning that it's going to take America a very long time to recover because it isn't just pulling itself out of the downturn that challenges the American people and their society, it's redressing nearly three decades of excess that will make or break the United States. More than a year before the meltdown America's last Comptroller General was telling anyone who would listen that the federal government's debt and unfunded liabilities worked out to $480,000 per household and that was before the trillions of borrowed money infused into the US economy by Bush and Obama.
Barack Obama hasn't salvaged the American economy, he's merely kept it from utterly collapsing, in itself a Herculean achievement. But that has necessitated adding a huge layer of new debt onto a pre-existing mountain of accumulated debt. It was a good thing to do and a reasonable amount of that money will be recovered but Washington hasn't begun to address how to bring the nation's books into order.
Despite their decadal mass psychosis that took hold in the Reagan years there is an abiding strength in the United States and the American people that may just help restore their nation and their society. It certainly won't be easy. America has to deal with fiscal and social and cultural imbalances at the same time as the entire world is confronted with truly existential environmental, energy and security threats.
As Canadians we're far too tightly tied to the United States and we'll ride the swells of its recovery and its setbacks. It's probably far too late to do much about that now but it's clear we're in for a hell of a ride.
And then there's that cheap fraud, Stephen Harper. This is the guy who castigated his own country and his countrymen for being so backward as not to embrace the very mentality that has laid America so low today. The man positively worshiped the very worst of American madness. At least the prime ministerial punk has figured out to stow that nonsense.
What's That Stuff Hitting Hamid's Fan?
Another sign that Afghanistan may be headed down the road to full-blown civil war. From The Times of London, Times Online:
One of Afghanistan’s most powerful warlords has defended the popular right to protest against the presidential election results, raising fears that the country could be engulfed by violence if supporters of the losing candidates reject the poll as being rigged.
General Atta Mohammad Nur, who broke ranks with the Government to support President Karzai’s main election rival, insisted: “It is the right of our people to defend their votes. Demonstrations, gatherings, strikes and protests against fraud being carried out by the current system are the absolute right of the people.”
...“They are threatening people from whose blood they have gained positions and powers,” General Atta, the Governor of Balkh province in the north, added. “No internal or external power can oppress our free people.”
His comments follow threats from the Interior Ministry to “break the teeth” of anyone who demonstrates.
..."Most people don’t realise how dangerous the situation is,” said an Afghan businessman. “They underestimate the opposition, and most people overestimate the Government’s ability to calm things down.”
The price of Kalashnikovs has almost doubled in recent weeks, prompting speculation that people are rearming in the post-election chaos despite years of international efforts to reduce the number of weapons in circulation.
What to do? Oh I know, let's call Rick Hillier and see if he's got any good ideas!
One of Afghanistan’s most powerful warlords has defended the popular right to protest against the presidential election results, raising fears that the country could be engulfed by violence if supporters of the losing candidates reject the poll as being rigged.
General Atta Mohammad Nur, who broke ranks with the Government to support President Karzai’s main election rival, insisted: “It is the right of our people to defend their votes. Demonstrations, gatherings, strikes and protests against fraud being carried out by the current system are the absolute right of the people.”
...“They are threatening people from whose blood they have gained positions and powers,” General Atta, the Governor of Balkh province in the north, added. “No internal or external power can oppress our free people.”
His comments follow threats from the Interior Ministry to “break the teeth” of anyone who demonstrates.
..."Most people don’t realise how dangerous the situation is,” said an Afghan businessman. “They underestimate the opposition, and most people overestimate the Government’s ability to calm things down.”
The price of Kalashnikovs has almost doubled in recent weeks, prompting speculation that people are rearming in the post-election chaos despite years of international efforts to reduce the number of weapons in circulation.
What to do? Oh I know, let's call Rick Hillier and see if he's got any good ideas!
"There are no reserves left. It's a question of survival of the human race."
"There are no reserves left. It's a question of survival of the human race."
That was the reasoning of French president Nicolas Sarkozy to support the introduction of a national carbon tax to come into effect next year. The tax, at 17-Euros per ton of carbon emissions, makes France the largest nation in the EU to introduce a carbon tax.
From The Guardian:
The president stressed that the state would not reap any funds from the measure. All of the €3bn collected would be returned to families and business through tax credits, tax cuts and other green incentives.
The system will differentiate between people who live in urban areas with good public transport and those who live in rural areas and are more dependent on cars. The rural households will get more money back from the state, he said.
Although the tax will apply to oil, gas and coal, it will not apply to electricity. Sarkozy argued that with 80% of electricity produced in France coming from nuclear plants, which have low emissions, it would make no sense to increase the price of this form of power.
That probably sounds a lot like the Green Shift envisioned by Stephane Dion. It is. Sarkozy, however, knew better than to introduce it as an election issue - a critical point that eluded Mr. Dion.
Despite all the nonsense spewed by Stephen Harper and Jack Layton and, latterly, even Michael Ignatieff, we're all going to get to the point Sarkozy has brought France. The only reason we wouldn't go for a carbon tax in Canada, and even Stephen Harper won't be able to conceal it, is to shield the Athabasca Tar Sands projects from responsibility for their rapacious energy consumption and resulting carbon emissions.
It really is too bad that Iggy is being so outmaneuvered, yet again, by Harper. Mr. Ignatieff's vaunted "war room" is coming to look awfully wobbly and so, in the minds of a troubling and apparently growing number of Canadians, is the leader himself.
Maybe there's still time for Mikey to smarten up and stop running to the edge of that cliff, over and over and over again. Or he can try to trigger an election. Either he wins or the LPC gives him the boot - a "no lose" proposition. He could, however, start thinking like an astute politician and wait for Harper to hand him an issue that will resonate with and trouble the majority of Canadians. He's not going to have to wait very long. Harper has to come up with a climate change policy pretty soon. The government can't go empty handed to the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
Ignatieff could start pounding the climate change drum. He could castigate Harper for keeping the Canadian public in the dark about what the environment experts know is coming. He can depict Harper as a guy who doesn't want Canadians to know even if that means they can't plan and prepare for what's coming. If he's smart he could make Harper squirm like a worm on a hook because Harper is baiting that hook himself.
If Ignatieff is stupid enough to force an election before he can find something on which he can effectively connect with the voting public, the Liberals will get what they deserve and Canada will probably get what it doesn't deserve.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
The Rising Chorus Demanding Action
I can hear the choir singing and pretty soon Steve and Mike and Jack won't be able to pretend they don't hear it too.
Here's the headling from today's London Free Press: "People need to prepare for extreme weather, expert says."
People - that'd be us, the Canadian people. Extreme weather - that's what is already setting in. Prepare - that's what Steve and Mike and Jack are trying to keep us from doing.
You see, in order for - the people - to prepare - for extreme weather - we need a bit of information, actually a lot of information. We need the sort of information other governments are giving their citizens to help them understand, plan and prepare for what climate change will bring to their countries.
It's not like we don't have the expertise to churn out this information. We do. We have climate scientists of all disciplines in the federal government whose salaries you pay every time you send in your taxes. I'd bet if they weren't under lockdown they'd be really happy to begin churning out reliable "best case scenario" climate change outlooks for every of the several distinct regions of Canada. What's so wrong with learning the best that will probably happen?
But don't take it from me. This from the London Free Press:
Governments and people need to be better prepared for weather extremes caused by climate change, a national research group headed by a London Nobel Prize-winner said today.
"Unusual" weather, such as tornados and floods, are becoming more and more frequent across Canada, said Gordon McBean, and yet most people aren't aware of it and are ill-prepared for it.
McBean is the lead author of a report released today that maps out how Canadian communities must adapt to worsening weather caused by climate change.
"The strength of typhoons and hurricanes has become stronger," said McBean. He's director of policy studies at UWO's Institute for Catastrophic Loss Prevention and shares the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the international Panel on Climate Change.
The study was conducted by the Adaptation to Climate Change Team of Simon Fraser University, with collaboration from the University of Windsor and UWO.
The team recommends Canada establish a national climate action centre to help co-ordinate planning for and to respond to weather extremes. It also calls for a national system that can alert people to climate hazards such as lightning, tornados and heavy rainfalls.
..."There's a real underestimation of the risk," he said.
Yet climate is becoming increasingly volatile.
"The more prepared people are, the most resilient they can be," Henstra said.
Individuals need to make sure they have 72 hours of food and water and a secondary source of heat. Then that preparedness needs to radiate out to the street, the block, the community and the province and country.
Yes, there is a real understimation of the risk especially by those who continue to shill for the Tar Sands. They know that slashing carbon emissions and climate change adaptation are firmly linked. It's a direct, causal connection. Once the public become informed about what's coming and what they need to do about it they won't find rampant carbon emissions from ventures like the Tar Sands remotely tolerable. What remains to be seen is how much longer we're going to allow the Tories and the Libs and the Dippers to sit on this fence.
Here's the headling from today's London Free Press: "People need to prepare for extreme weather, expert says."
People - that'd be us, the Canadian people. Extreme weather - that's what is already setting in. Prepare - that's what Steve and Mike and Jack are trying to keep us from doing.
You see, in order for - the people - to prepare - for extreme weather - we need a bit of information, actually a lot of information. We need the sort of information other governments are giving their citizens to help them understand, plan and prepare for what climate change will bring to their countries.
It's not like we don't have the expertise to churn out this information. We do. We have climate scientists of all disciplines in the federal government whose salaries you pay every time you send in your taxes. I'd bet if they weren't under lockdown they'd be really happy to begin churning out reliable "best case scenario" climate change outlooks for every of the several distinct regions of Canada. What's so wrong with learning the best that will probably happen?
But don't take it from me. This from the London Free Press:
Governments and people need to be better prepared for weather extremes caused by climate change, a national research group headed by a London Nobel Prize-winner said today.
"Unusual" weather, such as tornados and floods, are becoming more and more frequent across Canada, said Gordon McBean, and yet most people aren't aware of it and are ill-prepared for it.
McBean is the lead author of a report released today that maps out how Canadian communities must adapt to worsening weather caused by climate change.
"The strength of typhoons and hurricanes has become stronger," said McBean. He's director of policy studies at UWO's Institute for Catastrophic Loss Prevention and shares the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the international Panel on Climate Change.
The study was conducted by the Adaptation to Climate Change Team of Simon Fraser University, with collaboration from the University of Windsor and UWO.
The team recommends Canada establish a national climate action centre to help co-ordinate planning for and to respond to weather extremes. It also calls for a national system that can alert people to climate hazards such as lightning, tornados and heavy rainfalls.
..."There's a real underestimation of the risk," he said.
Yet climate is becoming increasingly volatile.
"The more prepared people are, the most resilient they can be," Henstra said.
Individuals need to make sure they have 72 hours of food and water and a secondary source of heat. Then that preparedness needs to radiate out to the street, the block, the community and the province and country.
Yes, there is a real understimation of the risk especially by those who continue to shill for the Tar Sands. They know that slashing carbon emissions and climate change adaptation are firmly linked. It's a direct, causal connection. Once the public become informed about what's coming and what they need to do about it they won't find rampant carbon emissions from ventures like the Tar Sands remotely tolerable. What remains to be seen is how much longer we're going to allow the Tories and the Libs and the Dippers to sit on this fence.
Making It Real - Dragging the Monster Out of the Shadows
I don't know how we're going to meet the challenge of global warming but I do know this. Based on the attitude shown by Stephen Harper and by Michael Ignatieff and by Jack Layton, we're not.
The Three Stooges of Parliament Hill are doing nothing to get reliable, "best case scenario" information to the Canadian people about what they should expect and need to plan and prepare for from the inevitable temperature increases, precipitation changes and sea level rises we and our children are going to experience this century.
Alex Renton, who prepared a report entitled "Suffering the Science: Climate change, people, and poverty" for OxFam says we'll get nowhere until we elect leaders who understand that, "the monster must be dragged out of the shadows and shown to the people who can get the world to act."
From Reuters AlterNet:
I’ve spent much of this year looking at the impacts on humans of climate change, eerily aware that for most of the rich world this is a phantom, a monster you may hear howling in the distance, if you want to - but as yet nothing to be seen or touched. If you believe - as Oxfam, who commissioned my report, does - that climate change along with poverty are the greatest threats to humanity this century, then the monster must be dragged out of the shadows and shown to the people who can get the world to act.
...The message from the scientists has been blurred, dangerously so, because it has provided prevaricating politicians with more excuses. But consensus is emerging. No one argues now with the fact that rice, soya and maize production is shifting rapidly across the hot regions of the world; that sea levels will rise twice as fast as we thought only three years ago; or that diseases are migrating geographically, often to populations with no knowledge of them, and little defence.
Another interesting indicator is the rate at which the scientists themselves are getting bleaker: 90 per cent of them, according to two recent polls, don’t believe the world can attain the emissions targets that will keep warming to an “acceptable” two degrees this century.
Lord Stern, whose hugely influential review for the British government of the economics of climate change was published in 2007, said in April this year: “I probably under-did it.” He now believes that a devastating five degrees of warming this century is “not a small probability of a rather unattractive outcome… [but] a big probability of a very bad outcome”. So what’s a cash-strapped, over-advised rich world government to do?
I think the answer is quite simple. There are two issues here: one is the causes of climate change. The other is the problem of adapting the planet, and humanity, to what is already proven to be a rapidly changing climate. The Dutch are spending $1.9bn (£1.1bn) every year now on improving their sea defences - that is because there is an immediate need; it is equally so across the world.
We can continue to debate why our ship is sinking, and how and when we must cut carbon emissions: but we must start getting the lifeboats ready. That will be expensive. Most agencies have put the costs of at $100-$150bn a year. One of Britain’s most eminent researchers on climate change, Professor Martin Parry, on Friday released a report estimating the price at three times that. It’s a lot, but not so much seen in terms of bank bailouts. And, as Lord Stern has said, money spent well in the parts of the world where climate change will hit hardest, will be money that also helps those countries develop.
Every dollar spent now helping people adapt and prepare will be measured in lives saved, in agony mitigated. It will also act to prevent the great migrations of which world governments are so frightened. There is a disaster coming: even my sceptical heart has had to admit that. But I’m confident we can still limit the extent of it.
If only, Alex, if only. It makes me ashamed to be Canadian that we have two major political leaders from the right and their butt-boy from the left who won't stand up for the world, this country and the Canadian people on climate change. They're a national disgrace, every one of them, Layton included. Harper's cadre of political commissars in the PMO keep an airtight lid on EnviroCan, preventing our best climate scientists from giving us the information we need right now. He does it because Ignatieff and Layton are just fine with it too.
Not one of them wants to see the monster dragged out of the shadows and shown to the Canadian people. Why who knows where that might lead? Once we get a look at what's coming our way, what's happening to everyone else on the planet may suddenly become disturbingly real to us. They don't want us riled up on this because, to a man, they know just how they're going to look when that happens.
The Three Stooges of Parliament Hill are doing nothing to get reliable, "best case scenario" information to the Canadian people about what they should expect and need to plan and prepare for from the inevitable temperature increases, precipitation changes and sea level rises we and our children are going to experience this century.
Alex Renton, who prepared a report entitled "Suffering the Science: Climate change, people, and poverty" for OxFam says we'll get nowhere until we elect leaders who understand that, "the monster must be dragged out of the shadows and shown to the people who can get the world to act."
From Reuters AlterNet:
I’ve spent much of this year looking at the impacts on humans of climate change, eerily aware that for most of the rich world this is a phantom, a monster you may hear howling in the distance, if you want to - but as yet nothing to be seen or touched. If you believe - as Oxfam, who commissioned my report, does - that climate change along with poverty are the greatest threats to humanity this century, then the monster must be dragged out of the shadows and shown to the people who can get the world to act.
...The message from the scientists has been blurred, dangerously so, because it has provided prevaricating politicians with more excuses. But consensus is emerging. No one argues now with the fact that rice, soya and maize production is shifting rapidly across the hot regions of the world; that sea levels will rise twice as fast as we thought only three years ago; or that diseases are migrating geographically, often to populations with no knowledge of them, and little defence.
Another interesting indicator is the rate at which the scientists themselves are getting bleaker: 90 per cent of them, according to two recent polls, don’t believe the world can attain the emissions targets that will keep warming to an “acceptable” two degrees this century.
Lord Stern, whose hugely influential review for the British government of the economics of climate change was published in 2007, said in April this year: “I probably under-did it.” He now believes that a devastating five degrees of warming this century is “not a small probability of a rather unattractive outcome… [but] a big probability of a very bad outcome”. So what’s a cash-strapped, over-advised rich world government to do?
I think the answer is quite simple. There are two issues here: one is the causes of climate change. The other is the problem of adapting the planet, and humanity, to what is already proven to be a rapidly changing climate. The Dutch are spending $1.9bn (£1.1bn) every year now on improving their sea defences - that is because there is an immediate need; it is equally so across the world.
We can continue to debate why our ship is sinking, and how and when we must cut carbon emissions: but we must start getting the lifeboats ready. That will be expensive. Most agencies have put the costs of at $100-$150bn a year. One of Britain’s most eminent researchers on climate change, Professor Martin Parry, on Friday released a report estimating the price at three times that. It’s a lot, but not so much seen in terms of bank bailouts. And, as Lord Stern has said, money spent well in the parts of the world where climate change will hit hardest, will be money that also helps those countries develop.
Every dollar spent now helping people adapt and prepare will be measured in lives saved, in agony mitigated. It will also act to prevent the great migrations of which world governments are so frightened. There is a disaster coming: even my sceptical heart has had to admit that. But I’m confident we can still limit the extent of it.
If only, Alex, if only. It makes me ashamed to be Canadian that we have two major political leaders from the right and their butt-boy from the left who won't stand up for the world, this country and the Canadian people on climate change. They're a national disgrace, every one of them, Layton included. Harper's cadre of political commissars in the PMO keep an airtight lid on EnviroCan, preventing our best climate scientists from giving us the information we need right now. He does it because Ignatieff and Layton are just fine with it too.
Not one of them wants to see the monster dragged out of the shadows and shown to the Canadian people. Why who knows where that might lead? Once we get a look at what's coming our way, what's happening to everyone else on the planet may suddenly become disturbingly real to us. They don't want us riled up on this because, to a man, they know just how they're going to look when that happens.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Water, Water Neverywhere
In these days of global warming much attention is being paid to the fast expanding regions of drought across the planet. Drought has a visceral quality to us all. Who among us doesn't have some experience of real thirst? Drought is also enormously visual. Images of cracked and barren earth, dried up river beds, starving livestock are the very badges of drought.
What gets much less attention are the regions on the other end of this phenomenon, the areas now afflicted with regular and highly destructive flooding. Here's one way of looking at it: a cow that dies from drought and a cow that dies from flooding are both dead cows. Too much rain can be just as destructive as no rain at all. Take Africa. East Africa is plagued with persistent drought but West Africa is beset with annual flooding. From Reuters:
"Welcome to hell, President." That was the banner headline of the Senegalese newspaper L'Observateur this week, ahead of the anticipated return of President Abdoulaye Wade from his holiday in Europe.
The hell the paper referred to was Senegal, where rainfall had flooded 30,000 homes in the outskirts of the capital Dakar and two other towns. Persistent power cuts sparked protests across the country while Wade holidayed in Switzerland and France.
"We are already dead and nothing matters to us. We are caught between power cuts, floods and insecurity," the paper quoted a resident of Pikine one of the flooded suburbs of Dakar.
...Many of the vulnerable live on unsafe ground. The suburbs of Dakar, home to about 1 million people, should never have been inhabited because it was swampland dried by years of drought, according to experts.
"Water oozes naturally from the earth, then there is waste water from human settlement and rainfall all of which converge in the rainy season to create an explosion of floods, cholera and malaria," Libasse Hanne a geographer and municipal councillor told AlertNet.
And so, governments in the region which hosts 13 of the world's least developed countries according to the United Nations are forced to dip into their cash strapped economies for disaster management funds.
Too much water, no water - same difference. Every farmer knows that what matters is receiving the right amount of water at the right time. Too much rain can leave the farmer unable to get onto his land to plant or to harvest or it can cause the crops to rot. Too little rain means no growth or, worse, drought.
The double whammy of global warming is not just that it's changing precipitation levels from one region to the next but that it's changing precipitation patterns, sometimes missing growing seasons entirely.
What's the answer? There probably isn't any answer for vast tracts of our planet but that doesn't mean there isn't a lesson in this for us here in blessed Canada. While we've made some progress we're still taking our water supply too much for granted. Like other aspects of global warming-driven climate change, we need to begin getting reliable information from Ottawa on what change we can expect to see over the next few generations at least. Just as we have to start dealing with warming and sea level rise, so too we have to begin looking at what's coming our way in terms of precipitation changes. Only when we receive reliable information about our prospects can we begin to plan for contingencies and then put those plans into some form of action. It's time that Messrs. Harper, Ignatieff and Layton pulled their thumbs out of their asses and began earning their pay.
What gets much less attention are the regions on the other end of this phenomenon, the areas now afflicted with regular and highly destructive flooding. Here's one way of looking at it: a cow that dies from drought and a cow that dies from flooding are both dead cows. Too much rain can be just as destructive as no rain at all. Take Africa. East Africa is plagued with persistent drought but West Africa is beset with annual flooding. From Reuters:
"Welcome to hell, President." That was the banner headline of the Senegalese newspaper L'Observateur this week, ahead of the anticipated return of President Abdoulaye Wade from his holiday in Europe.
The hell the paper referred to was Senegal, where rainfall had flooded 30,000 homes in the outskirts of the capital Dakar and two other towns. Persistent power cuts sparked protests across the country while Wade holidayed in Switzerland and France.
"We are already dead and nothing matters to us. We are caught between power cuts, floods and insecurity," the paper quoted a resident of Pikine one of the flooded suburbs of Dakar.
...Many of the vulnerable live on unsafe ground. The suburbs of Dakar, home to about 1 million people, should never have been inhabited because it was swampland dried by years of drought, according to experts.
"Water oozes naturally from the earth, then there is waste water from human settlement and rainfall all of which converge in the rainy season to create an explosion of floods, cholera and malaria," Libasse Hanne a geographer and municipal councillor told AlertNet.
And so, governments in the region which hosts 13 of the world's least developed countries according to the United Nations are forced to dip into their cash strapped economies for disaster management funds.
Too much water, no water - same difference. Every farmer knows that what matters is receiving the right amount of water at the right time. Too much rain can leave the farmer unable to get onto his land to plant or to harvest or it can cause the crops to rot. Too little rain means no growth or, worse, drought.
The double whammy of global warming is not just that it's changing precipitation levels from one region to the next but that it's changing precipitation patterns, sometimes missing growing seasons entirely.
What's the answer? There probably isn't any answer for vast tracts of our planet but that doesn't mean there isn't a lesson in this for us here in blessed Canada. While we've made some progress we're still taking our water supply too much for granted. Like other aspects of global warming-driven climate change, we need to begin getting reliable information from Ottawa on what change we can expect to see over the next few generations at least. Just as we have to start dealing with warming and sea level rise, so too we have to begin looking at what's coming our way in terms of precipitation changes. Only when we receive reliable information about our prospects can we begin to plan for contingencies and then put those plans into some form of action. It's time that Messrs. Harper, Ignatieff and Layton pulled their thumbs out of their asses and began earning their pay.
Too Stupid for Health Care?
Ignorance equals gullibility. The less you know the easier you are misled. If this first decade of the 21st century has demonstrated anything, it's that our cousins to the south are, to an alarming degree, ignorant and gullible and easily misled.
In the United States, public support for universal healthcare is plummeting. The pathetic performance of the Democrats and the unspeakably vile lies spread by the Republicans and their private sector co-conspirators has unnerved the American people. Talk of "death panels" and such has caused real fear and suspicion to take hold.
I think most Americans know their country spends more per capita on healthcare than any other and yet, on a performance basis, American healthcare ranks 37th in the world. Talk about American exceptionalism! You have to be exceptional to spend so much more than everyone else to enjoy so much less for it.
But if they know they're spending so much more for so much less, why aren't they marching through the streets with torches and pitchforks? Why? Because they're afraid. The "land of the free and the home of the brave" has been transformed into the land of the corralled and home of the easily intimidated.
Ever since 9/11, the American right has been using fear as a cudgel to shape American public opinion. Remember when then Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge sent them panicking into the streets to snap up every last scrap of duct tape and plastic sheeting which many wasted no time in slapping up all over their doors and windows? Those are people who are way too easily frightened for their own good.
This is a nation of people who have lost their ability to discern reality. It is a nation of people who truly believed their homes were ATM machines that would allow them bountiful luxuries now and boundless comfort in their old age. Americans are a people who, despite the stream of disclaimers from Hans Blix and his weapons instructors, believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the means to attack America with them. They are a nation of people who firmly believe in creationism and think the theory of evolution is a scientific fraud. They've come to equate science with fraud so much that a great many of them believe global warming to be a hoax perpetrated by scientists in order to secure lavish government grants.
The strength of America, like the strength of any nation, is in its people and right now that is the country's greatest danger. America is in decline. It's not the Chinese or the Europeans or anyone else who is undoing the United States, it's the American people. They believe they're the same people as the Americans of sixty years ago. They're not. And that's just sad.
In the United States, public support for universal healthcare is plummeting. The pathetic performance of the Democrats and the unspeakably vile lies spread by the Republicans and their private sector co-conspirators has unnerved the American people. Talk of "death panels" and such has caused real fear and suspicion to take hold.
I think most Americans know their country spends more per capita on healthcare than any other and yet, on a performance basis, American healthcare ranks 37th in the world. Talk about American exceptionalism! You have to be exceptional to spend so much more than everyone else to enjoy so much less for it.
But if they know they're spending so much more for so much less, why aren't they marching through the streets with torches and pitchforks? Why? Because they're afraid. The "land of the free and the home of the brave" has been transformed into the land of the corralled and home of the easily intimidated.
Ever since 9/11, the American right has been using fear as a cudgel to shape American public opinion. Remember when then Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge sent them panicking into the streets to snap up every last scrap of duct tape and plastic sheeting which many wasted no time in slapping up all over their doors and windows? Those are people who are way too easily frightened for their own good.
This is a nation of people who have lost their ability to discern reality. It is a nation of people who truly believed their homes were ATM machines that would allow them bountiful luxuries now and boundless comfort in their old age. Americans are a people who, despite the stream of disclaimers from Hans Blix and his weapons instructors, believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the means to attack America with them. They are a nation of people who firmly believe in creationism and think the theory of evolution is a scientific fraud. They've come to equate science with fraud so much that a great many of them believe global warming to be a hoax perpetrated by scientists in order to secure lavish government grants.
The strength of America, like the strength of any nation, is in its people and right now that is the country's greatest danger. America is in decline. It's not the Chinese or the Europeans or anyone else who is undoing the United States, it's the American people. They believe they're the same people as the Americans of sixty years ago. They're not. And that's just sad.
Monday, September 07, 2009
If We Don't Take It, They Will - America's Tar Sands Conundrum
Who would have thought that China would have given American oil companies the cover they need to ramp up production and pipeline access to the Athabasca Tar Sands?
The United States currently gets about 1.5-billion barrels a day of "unconventional oil" from Athabasca a volume it wants to see increased to 4.3-billion barrels a day by 2030.
In defending a new pipeline project to transport Athabasca oil to the United States, the State Department argued it, “would serve the national interest, in a time of considerable political tension in other major oil-producing regions and countries, by providing additional access to a proximate, stable, secure supply of crude oil.”
The Obama administration argues that the "national interest" outweighs all the environmental ramifications of tar sands oil extraction. Besides, it contends, if America doesn't glom on to all that tar oil, the Chinese or Japanese will simply have it piped to the West coast for their use.
Whatever the merits of either side of the pipeline debate — and the larger one over Alberta’s oil sands — that possibility may already be under way. Just last week, PetroChina, a Chinese state-owned oil company, agreed to pay $1.7 billion for a majority stake in two tar sands projects.
The writing is on the wall. Washington is bound and determined to squeeze as much oil as can be had from the Tar Sands and we're probably going to keep them happy. That means the "Rest of Canada" is somehow going to have to make good Alberta's massive and burgeoning carbon emissions or we'll be honest and simply throw in the towel on global warming. Given the total absence of political spine from the leadership of the CPC, the LPC and the NDP, Canada is poised to join the ranks of the world's worst environmental pariahs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/business/global/07iht-green07.html?pagewanted=2
The United States currently gets about 1.5-billion barrels a day of "unconventional oil" from Athabasca a volume it wants to see increased to 4.3-billion barrels a day by 2030.
In defending a new pipeline project to transport Athabasca oil to the United States, the State Department argued it, “would serve the national interest, in a time of considerable political tension in other major oil-producing regions and countries, by providing additional access to a proximate, stable, secure supply of crude oil.”
The Obama administration argues that the "national interest" outweighs all the environmental ramifications of tar sands oil extraction. Besides, it contends, if America doesn't glom on to all that tar oil, the Chinese or Japanese will simply have it piped to the West coast for their use.
Whatever the merits of either side of the pipeline debate — and the larger one over Alberta’s oil sands — that possibility may already be under way. Just last week, PetroChina, a Chinese state-owned oil company, agreed to pay $1.7 billion for a majority stake in two tar sands projects.
The writing is on the wall. Washington is bound and determined to squeeze as much oil as can be had from the Tar Sands and we're probably going to keep them happy. That means the "Rest of Canada" is somehow going to have to make good Alberta's massive and burgeoning carbon emissions or we'll be honest and simply throw in the towel on global warming. Given the total absence of political spine from the leadership of the CPC, the LPC and the NDP, Canada is poised to join the ranks of the world's worst environmental pariahs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/business/global/07iht-green07.html?pagewanted=2
America - Still Number One!
The United States may be reeling from the fallout of its Ponzi-scheme economy. It is struggling with a crushing debtload. It has lost a lot of its prestige and clout around the world. But it's still hands down Numero Uno where it counts - weapons sales.
When the world wants to kill somebody it still turns to Old Reliable, the United States of America. From Reuters:
The United States accounted for more than two-thirds of foreign weapons sales in 2008, a year in which global sales were at a three-year low, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
Citing a congressional study released on Friday, the Times said the United States was involved in 68.4 percent of the global sales of arms.
U.S. weapons sales jumped nearly 50 percent in 2008 despite the global economic recession to $37.8 billion from $25.4 billion the year before.
The jump defied worldwide trends as global arms sales fell 7.6 percent to $55.2 billion in 2008, the report said. Global weapons agreements were at their lowest level since 2005.
Look at it this way. If it wasn't for America's military-industrial complex, the United States might not have a complex at all!
When the world wants to kill somebody it still turns to Old Reliable, the United States of America. From Reuters:
The United States accounted for more than two-thirds of foreign weapons sales in 2008, a year in which global sales were at a three-year low, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
Citing a congressional study released on Friday, the Times said the United States was involved in 68.4 percent of the global sales of arms.
U.S. weapons sales jumped nearly 50 percent in 2008 despite the global economic recession to $37.8 billion from $25.4 billion the year before.
The jump defied worldwide trends as global arms sales fell 7.6 percent to $55.2 billion in 2008, the report said. Global weapons agreements were at their lowest level since 2005.
Look at it this way. If it wasn't for America's military-industrial complex, the United States might not have a complex at all!
Hamid Calling. Can We Have a Chat?
With his election victory well and truly stitched up, Afghan president Hamid Karzai is sending a forceful message to his Western benefactors. Do we have the courage to listen?
For all his faults (he is a warlord after all), Karzai is not stupid. He knew that 'winning' this election would fool no one, Afghan or foreigner. You can't commit electoral fraud on what will have to become known as the "Karzai Scale" without anyone, no everyone, noticing.
Polls that voted 100% for Hamid Karzai, polls that had more than 100% turnout, all watched over by an independent election commission appointed by - well you know, Hamid Karzai. Today's New York Times reports that Karzai's henchmen set up, "...hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election."
So what exactly is the message that Karzai is sending to us in the West? He could be telling us to go to hell, but I doubt it. The Afghan army is neither strong nor reliable enough to replace Western forces in that country. With a plainly illegitimate government in Kabul the ethnic strains could cause the army to fracture back into tribal militias. No, Karzai still needs the West way too much to order us out.
Maybe Hamid is trying to tell us that his country is simply too far gone for fanciful notions like elections. Perhaps he thought that rigging the election was Afghanistan's best hope for avoiding outright civil war.
In the run-up to the election, Karzai aligned himself with a few truly nasty despots, guys with names like Dostum and Fahim. He even tried to get Hekmatyar to ditch the insurgency and come on board. Karzai was looking for a lot more than simple endorsements from these characters and they were looking for much more in return. Abdul Rashid Dostum (a.k.a. Heavy D or D-Diddy) may not have run in this election but he certainly won nonetheless.
Now imagine these people tossed out onto the street over something as trivial (to them) as electoral fraud? You install Abdullah Abdullah and his loyalists in power. The warlords still control the legislature and Team Karzai goes where? To the insurgency? How clever!
I suspect the rigging of this election was Karzai's way of telling the West that his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, isn't strong enough to govern Afghanistan, to hold the place together and avoid plunging it into all-out civil war.
I'm guessing that Karzai figures we'll have to hold our noses and let this one slide because tossing Karzai and backing Abdullah would be a bit like us putting a torch to the very shack we're currently stuck inside.
It's a hard one to read but I think we'll know when this election is officially over by when Abdullah goes into exile for his own safety. That's the Afghan way.
For all his faults (he is a warlord after all), Karzai is not stupid. He knew that 'winning' this election would fool no one, Afghan or foreigner. You can't commit electoral fraud on what will have to become known as the "Karzai Scale" without anyone, no everyone, noticing.
Polls that voted 100% for Hamid Karzai, polls that had more than 100% turnout, all watched over by an independent election commission appointed by - well you know, Hamid Karzai. Today's New York Times reports that Karzai's henchmen set up, "...hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election."
So what exactly is the message that Karzai is sending to us in the West? He could be telling us to go to hell, but I doubt it. The Afghan army is neither strong nor reliable enough to replace Western forces in that country. With a plainly illegitimate government in Kabul the ethnic strains could cause the army to fracture back into tribal militias. No, Karzai still needs the West way too much to order us out.
Maybe Hamid is trying to tell us that his country is simply too far gone for fanciful notions like elections. Perhaps he thought that rigging the election was Afghanistan's best hope for avoiding outright civil war.
In the run-up to the election, Karzai aligned himself with a few truly nasty despots, guys with names like Dostum and Fahim. He even tried to get Hekmatyar to ditch the insurgency and come on board. Karzai was looking for a lot more than simple endorsements from these characters and they were looking for much more in return. Abdul Rashid Dostum (a.k.a. Heavy D or D-Diddy) may not have run in this election but he certainly won nonetheless.
Now imagine these people tossed out onto the street over something as trivial (to them) as electoral fraud? You install Abdullah Abdullah and his loyalists in power. The warlords still control the legislature and Team Karzai goes where? To the insurgency? How clever!
I suspect the rigging of this election was Karzai's way of telling the West that his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, isn't strong enough to govern Afghanistan, to hold the place together and avoid plunging it into all-out civil war.
I'm guessing that Karzai figures we'll have to hold our noses and let this one slide because tossing Karzai and backing Abdullah would be a bit like us putting a torch to the very shack we're currently stuck inside.
It's a hard one to read but I think we'll know when this election is officially over by when Abdullah goes into exile for his own safety. That's the Afghan way.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Arch-Repug George Will Wants US Out of Iraq and Afghanistan
When rightwing pundit George Will begins calling for America to quit Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe it's time to check Washington's water supply. But that, according to a piece in TruthOut, is precisely what Will wants right now:
On September 1st, The Washington Post carried an article by George Will titled "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan." Three days later, Will published a second article titled "Time to Leave Iraq."
Yes, this actually happened.
In his out-of-Afghanistan article, Will argued, "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters." This should be done, he concluded, so no more valorous American soldiers die over there.
In his out-of-Iraq piece, Will contends that, "Nations which suffer civil wars as large as Iraq's was between 2004 and 2006 have 'a terrifyingly high rate of recidivism.' Two more years of US military presence cannot control whether that is in Iraq's future. Some people believe the war in Iraq was not only 'won' but vindicated by the success of the 2007 US troop surge. Yet as Iraqi violence is resurgent, the logic of triumphalism leads here: If, in spite of contrary evidence, the US surge permanently dampened sectarian violence, all US forces can come home sooner than the end of 2011. If, however, the surge did not so succeed, US forces must come home sooner."
It's enough to make any left-leaning opponents of the Iraq and Afghan wars want to re-think their position on the whole thing. It is refreshing to see so blunt an assessment regarding military withdrawal appear in The Washington Post, one of the most vociferous cheerleaders for both Bush-era boondoggles, but coming from Will it all rings more than a little hollow.
Hmm, I wonder if Harper reads The Washington Post?
On September 1st, The Washington Post carried an article by George Will titled "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan." Three days later, Will published a second article titled "Time to Leave Iraq."
Yes, this actually happened.
In his out-of-Afghanistan article, Will argued, "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters." This should be done, he concluded, so no more valorous American soldiers die over there.
In his out-of-Iraq piece, Will contends that, "Nations which suffer civil wars as large as Iraq's was between 2004 and 2006 have 'a terrifyingly high rate of recidivism.' Two more years of US military presence cannot control whether that is in Iraq's future. Some people believe the war in Iraq was not only 'won' but vindicated by the success of the 2007 US troop surge. Yet as Iraqi violence is resurgent, the logic of triumphalism leads here: If, in spite of contrary evidence, the US surge permanently dampened sectarian violence, all US forces can come home sooner than the end of 2011. If, however, the surge did not so succeed, US forces must come home sooner."
It's enough to make any left-leaning opponents of the Iraq and Afghan wars want to re-think their position on the whole thing. It is refreshing to see so blunt an assessment regarding military withdrawal appear in The Washington Post, one of the most vociferous cheerleaders for both Bush-era boondoggles, but coming from Will it all rings more than a little hollow.
Hmm, I wonder if Harper reads The Washington Post?
(photo caption - Will always seeks a second opinion on which way the wind's blowing)
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