Another Lesson from Japan. Globalization Leaves Every Country Very, Very Vulnerable

Who would have thought that a massive wave washing ashore in northeastern Japan would shut down auto assembly lines in North America?   That's what happens in today's world of lean and fragile globalized manufacturing.

All the big Japanese auto manufacturers build cars in North America and almost everything in those cars is also made here.   Almost.   But there remains some 7-8%  of the components that come from Japan and you can't build, much less sell a car that's only 92% complete.

Because the industry’s global supply chain is so integrated, analysts predict that short-term disruptions of both vehicle parts and some popular models are imminent.

Not only is Japan’s ravaged northeastern region a major hub for auto parts suppliers and critical infrastructure that traditionally ensured the flow of goods to overseas markets, but persistent power outages have not let up.

For those reasons, Nissan Inc. said some Infiniti models, as well as the GTR and 370Z, could face delayed shipment to Canada and the United States. The North American supply of fuel-efficient cars such as the Toyota Yaris, Toyota Prius hybrid and Honda Fit is at risk because those cars are only made in Japan.

Shutdowns could affect Toyota Canada Inc. and Honda Canada Inc., which each have two assembly plants in Canada. Toyota employs about 6,200 workers and Honda employs around 4,600.

Aiming Is An Intentional Act

Memo to NATO - Try harder when you're responding to complaints about dead civilians.

Last week a NATO gunship helicopter whacked nine Afghan boys out gathering firewood.  The bad news:  they've done it again.   The good news:  they only killed two kids this time.

The two boys, 11 and 17, were tending their family's farm when a helo showed up  and took them out.  NATO's response?  The crew "may have unintentionally engaged civilians who were working on road and field drainage."   Guess what?  There's nothing remotely unintentional about lining up a person in your sights, squeezing the trigger and sending them to Allah.  The death could be mistaken, negligent, criminally negligent, even murderous but the one thing it's not is "unintentional."   I'm sure the crew didn't mean to kill kids but they did mean to kill those two.

Can we go home now?

When Gaddafi Unleashes His Armour on Pro-Democracy Protesters We Call It A "War Crime."

But when the King of Bahrain and his Saudi backers unleash their heavy machine guns against unarmed Bahraini pro-democracy protesters our leaders just dummy up.  Nobody in holier-than-thou Washington is condemning the Bahraini king for crimes against humanity.   No one is calling for his regal ass to be hauled before the International Court of Justice.

Hypocrisy?  You betcha.  But, it's not the same.   After all, the Bahraini protesters are Shiite Muslim, the same faith as those buggers in Iran.   They're not the good guys, the Sunni Muslim, the side that filled all those planes that flattened America's embassies, bombed the USS Cole and brought the World Trade Centers down into what became known as "ground zero."

As was pointed out rather well today on Al Jazeera, Shiite Iran wasn't really a factor in Shiite majority Bahrain - not until WE turned our backs on the pro-democracy protesters.  Now, however, as our guys gun down the Shiite protesters in Bahrain's streets we've created a situation in which Iran is the only country siding with the protesters.   We have handed yet another unearned victory to Iran, one Tehran could not have achieved without our direct help.

You see, hypocrisy is a huge problem when you're no longer the world's only superpower and have people believing your military is invincible.   Once that global power illusion bursts the munchkins get all uppity.  It's a lesson that hasn't sunk in with Washington, even after a change of management.  They still believe they can pull this shit with impunity.   Ah - wrong.

Now we're the ones that have to straighten up and fly right.   If we keep playing schoolyard bully we're going to get called out and that's a fight we can no longer win.

Dickens Workhouse Saved

It doesn't look like much but this was an 18th century workhouse said to have inspired Charles Dickens to write Oliver Twist.    At the time, a young Dickens lived just nine doors away.

The run down building had been slated for demolition but Britain's Heritage Minister intervened at the last minute to preserve what he described as  "an eloquent reminder of one of the grimmer aspects of London's 18th-century history''.

For Some, It's Much More Than Collective Bargaining

We're all aware that collective bargaining is under fierce assault by the radical right in America.   I had collective representation, in one form or another, for almost all of my working life.  That ranged from unions and guilds to professional associations and societies.   In their way, they were all variations on the same theme.

But to some, collective bargaining has an extra dimension.    For American blacks it was a vehicle to overcome institutional racism and discrimination.  That's why Color of Change has instituted a campaign in defence of collective bargaining.  You can give them a hand by signing their petition here.

Hey Fellas, Be My Guest

My blog was just visited by the US Army Intelligence Center.   They're shown as having checked out two posts.  One was the recent piece on Gwynne Dyer calling for urgent Egyptian military intervention to stop Gadaffi wiping out the uprising and butchering the rebels and their families.    The other was my piece from February 22 calling for urgent Egyptian military intervention to stop Gadaffi wiping out the uprising and butchering the rebels and their families.

Hey guys, glad you could stop by.   I'm even waiving any claims to intellectual property on these ideas.   Be my guest, help yourselves, go for it.   You're still giving those Egyptians billions of dollars in military aid.   Time you called in a marker or two.

The Cost of Democracy In Our Ally, Bahrain

Here's video of how our good Sunni ally, Bahrain, Kingdom of, embraces peaceful protest.   The pro-democracy group, armed only with placards, marched on Bahraini armoured vehicles in their path



This allows you a bit of perspective of how the protest would have been seen by Bahraini/Saudi soldiers manning their heavy automatic weapons from their armoured vehicles.   About halfway through the clip is the scene where, after the killings, the protesters return and sit down right in front of those same armoured vehicles.



Oh well, I suppose Canada should really keep its nose out of this.   It wouldn't do for an emerging fossil fuel superpower to criticize another rancid petro-state.

Japan Nuke Fiasco - Winners & Losers

Wow, throw "nuclear" into the mix and suddenly an enormous natural disaster is turned into an atomic Armageddon even if it's nothing of the sort.    There are thousands, possibly tens of thousands of dead folks in Japan right now.  How many of them died in the nuclear plant explosions?   Two thousand maybe?  Five thousand?   Ten?

Hey, Chicken Licken, how bout a little perspective?

It was a wall of sea water and debris that killed those thousands of Japanese, not their nuclear reactors.    It was that same tsunami that knocked out their reactors, not the earthquakes.   So, take a deep breath, grow up and unbunch those panties.

Besides, think about all the winners that are coming out of those nuclear plant failures -  Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas, Muammar Gaddafi among them.  Gaddafi, what does he have to gain from this?   Plenty.   While the world's mono-tasking attention is riveted to some remarkably disinteresting reactor buildings where no one is actually dying (inconvenient that, sort of), the democracy revolution that had been sweeping the Middle East is being swept under the carpet.

If it's the death of innocents that gets you all lathered up, how can a natural disaster in Japan that occured last Thursday compete with a mounting man-made disaster underway in the Muslim world?   We're not responsible for the tectonic plates that lie beneath Japan but we will be for the butchery about to spread through the oil lands of the Middle East while we look the other way.

As Gwynne Dyer argues, Muammar Gaddafi is about a week away from handing the world a massive, bloody fait accompli achieved while we sat around with our thumbs up our asses.

Gwynne Dyer Calls for Egyptian Intervention in Libya

Back on 22 February, I did a quick analysis and concluded the fastest, surest and least bloody option for ridding Libya of the mad tyrant Gaddafi was for Egypt's  air force and army to intervene.   Libya operates small forces of 60's and 70's-vintage armour, artillery and combat aircraft, ample to crush the rebels but not much else.   Egypt, by contrast, fields 240 F-16s and regiments of US-built M-1A1 tanks that, between them, could make short work of Gaddafi's firepower advantage.

Yesterday Gwynne Dyer added his endorsement of the Egyptian option.   Given Gaddafi's comeback of the past three weeks, Dyer argues that Egypt represents Libya's last chance.

What happens to the rebels and their families after active resistance is crushed will be much worse. When political prisoners in Abu Salim prison staged a protest at jail conditions in 1996, Gaddafy had 1,200 of them massacred. All the people now fighting him, or helping the Libyan National Council that organises resistance in the east, or just demonstrating against him, will be tracked down by his secret police. They and their families are doomed.

The collapse of the democratic revolution in Libya will also gravely damage the prospects of the “Arab spring” elsewhere. Rulers in other Arab countries where the army is also largely made up of foreign mercenaries (Bahrein and several other Gulf states, for example), will conclude that they can safely kill enough of their own protesters to “restore order.”

How can this disaster be prevented? Condemnation from abroad, including from the Arab League, will not stop Gaddafy. An arms embargo is too slow-acting, as are economic boycotts and freezing Libyan government assets overseas. Gaddafy is fighting for his life, probably literally, and he knows that if he wins, the embargoes, boycotts and asset freezes will eventually be lifted. Libya has oil, after all.

Even the famous “no-fly” zone over Libya (now endorsed by France, Britain and the Arab League) would not stop Gadaffy’s advance. It’s not that destroying or grounding the Libyan air force, which is poorly trained and badly maintained, is a problem. Neither are Libya’s decrepit, last-generation-but-one surface-to-air defences. It’s just that Gaddafy can win without his air force. Tanks and artillery beat courage and small arms every time.

...What is actually needed is active military intervention on the ground and in the air by disciplined, well-trained Arab forces, sent by a revolutionary Arab government that is in sympathy with the Libyan rebels. So where is the Egyptian army when the Libyans need it?
Egypt has an open border with the rebel-controlled east of Libya, and just one brigade of the Egyptian army would be enough to stop Gaddafy’s ground forces in their tracks. The Egyptian air force could easily shoot down any of Gaddafy’s aircraft that dared to take off, especially if it had early warning from European or American AWACS aircraft.

The Egyptian army would probably not need to go all the way to Tripoli, although it could easily do so if necessary. Just the fact of Egyptian military intervention would probably convince most of the Libyan troops still supporting Gaddafy that it is time to change sides.

Arab League support for the intervention would not be hard to get, and the Libyan rebels are now desperate enough that they would quickly overcome their natural distrust of their giant neighbour. As for internal Egyptian politics, what better way for the Egyptian army to establish its revolutionary credentials and protect its privileged position in the state than by saving the revolution next door?

It is very much in the interest of the Egyptian revolution that Gaddafy does not triumph in Libya, and even more that the forces of reaction do not win in the broader Arab world. For the first time since Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s, the giant of the Arab world would also be its moral leader.

...Egypt would be enough on its own. Only do it fast. A week from now will probably be too late.

Recently I was chided by some radical progressives for advocating this very sort of Egyptian military rescue, essentially called a war monger.   It's their type who would sit back self-righteously and allow the rebels, their wives and children to fall into the hands of Gaddafi's murderous security butchers.


I expect that's why I never have and never will support rightwing or leftwing politics.   Both are the refuge of rigid ideologues, radicals and extremists who demand a world that conforms to their worldview.   They're a minority certainly but they're welcome in those parties nonetheless.   I guess that makes me an avowed centrist, albeit of the centre-left.

With Nuclear Down the Tubes, We're Going to Have to Get More Radical About Alternative Energy

Modern, fourth and fifth-generation nuclear energy was, until the past week, about the only viable option to ease our transition from fossil fuels.   The nuclear option was the only one capable of delivering the amounts of energy required within the ever narrowing window for weaning our civilization off oil, gas and coal.   Solar, wind, tidal and geothermal technologies simply aren't scaleable as yet.   They won't do the job in time.

Japan's ongoing nuclear meltdown has made the nuclear option a non-starter.   The criticisms are simplistic, unfair even, but that really doesn't matter.   The argument is closed.

So, without the nuclear safety net, we're down to some awfully tough choices.  Either we stay with the existing, destructive but cheap fossil fuels or we prepare ourselves to pay a vastly greater portion of our incomes for alternative energies.  When many who were once secure in middle classdom now on the ropes, the cost of survival just became an awful lot tougher.

The Japanese fiasco has been music to the ears of Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Gas, especially as it has the Left taking to the streets with torches and pitchforks demanding an end to the nuclear option.

I don't know how many people, if any, will lose their lives to the Japanese reactor disasters but I know that many millions will lose their lives this century to global warming if we paint ourselves into a corner with the fossil fuel industries.   It's a tough choice and, right now, much of the public is indulging itself in an orgy of self-gratifying fear.   Somehow I have this feeling that the 21st won't be a pleasant century for the timid and the hesitant.

Shades of Hungary, 56 - Czechoslovakia, 68, Bahrain 2011

A military force from Saudi Arabia is reported to have entered Bahrain to supress anti-government demonstrations.

Mohammad al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said several of his fellow activists had seen the troops arriving.

The opposition statement said it considered the arrival of any soldier or military vehicle “an overt occupation of the kingdom of Bahrain and a conspiracy against the unarmed people of Bahrain.” 

Anti-government protesters remained in the streets of Manama, the capital, on Monday, a day after thousands clashed with security forces in the worst day of confrontation since demonstrations began a month ago. The protests are part of the regional turmoil against autocracy but are fed in Bahrain by tensions between the majority Shia population and the Sunni royal family and elite. 


The demonstrators on Sunday effectively shut down the roads leading to the capital’s financial sector and held rallies at the main campus of the university as well. 

We didn't hesitate to condemn the Soviets when they crushed pro-democracy movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.   What are the chances we'll do the same to Saudi Arabia?

Sorry, I must have been daydreaming.   What was I thinking?   The protesters are Bahrain's Shiite majority, Shiite as in Shiite Iran.   This all somehow ties in with Iran and that ties in with nuclear weapon proliferation.   And besides, our buddies are the Sunnis and the anti-democratic rulers of Bahrain are Sunnis and let's not forget the oil factor and - oh well, screw oppression!  Heck, it's probably good for them.

There Goes the Baby Out with the Bathwater

There are plenty of highly intelligent, eminently reasonable people who advocate nuclear power not just as a viable alternative to our fossil fuel addiction but as the only viable alternative, if we're to step back from the edge of runaway global warming.

Like many of us, at first I was dismissive of this pro-nuclear business.   Many of us have become wrapped up in the "Ban the Bomb/Dr. Strangelove/Three Mile Island/China Syndrome/Chernobyl" matrix of adamant anti-nuclear sentiment.  Yet, as I opened my mind and read a lot more about the nuclear option and corresponded with some nuclear-power proponents such as Australian professor Barry Brook (www.bravenewclimate.com) it became apparent I had a lot to learn.

Nuclear power is about as loaded a topic as can be imagined.  Yet most of us, including the media, fail to grasp the difference between early nuclear technology and today's fourth and fifth generation, "fast" reactors.  I won't go into a sales pitch here but I will toss out a few things you might not have known.

Old technology reactors are trouble.   Not only do they produce enriched nuclear waste (the stuff that can be further processed into "weapon grade" material) they're also enormously inefficient, getting just a fraction of the energy from their fuel rods which thereafter have to be safely buried for thousands of years.  Because old technology reactors are so inefficient there is genuine doubt about how long the world's remaining reserves of uranium would last.

New technology reactors solve many of these problems.   They can consume those "spent" reactor rods that we have to scrap and extract most of the energy from them.   They can likewise consume weapons grade fissile material.  In other words, they can clean up the mess that otherwise isn't going anywhere.   Best of all, they don't create enriched waste that can be processed for nuclear weaponry and, of course, they don't produce a lot of greenhouse gases either.

Despite the considerable promise of fourth and fifth-generation nuclear power, the fiasco in Japan may render it all for naught.   There are many conflicting opinions on the severity of the problem at the Japanese nuclear plants.  We're just going to have to wait to see what happens at the end of the day but, long before then, we're already turning on nuclear power of any variety.   The media may have filled enough empty minds with glowing visions of nuclear Armageddon to kill the nuclear option for all time.   In coming decades we may pay dearly for that.

Never Send a Meteorologist to Do a Seismologist's Job

I found this brainstorm at CBC News.   In a report on the Japanese earthquake,  CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe opined:

" A magnitude 8.9 quake is actually 8,000 times more powerful than a 7.2 quake,"   said Wagstaffe.   "  Because the earthquake occurred under the ocean floor, massive amounts of water were displaced above the shaking ocean ground, generating a tsunami."

8,000 times?   We know the Richter scale works on factors of ten.   An 8.0 magnitude quake, for example, would be ten times greater than a 7.0 tremblor.  Hence a 9.0 quake would be one hundred times more powerful than a 7.0.  What beggars belief is how Wagstaffe comes up with the math than an 8.9 quake is eight thousand times more powerful than a 7.2.

If anything, meteorologists know far less about seismology than climatology.  They're trained to guess whether it's going to rain tomorrow, not whether you've got a tsunami in your future.   Yet when a story like the Japanese quake arrives, everybody and their cousins get to weigh in, even if they really know squat.

So Much for Libya

He may be as mad as a hatter but Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi knows how to turn around events.

At first it seemed like Gaddafi & Sons was finished.   By some accounts the old bugger was reluctant to deploy his land forces fearing they might turn on him if they saw defeat inevitable.   Then Muammar caught a lucky break in the form of international hesitation.    All the talk about a "no fly zone" over Libya turned out to be just talk. 

Gaddafi the survivor seemed to grasp that he was being given a window of opportunity in which he could suppress the revolt, reclaim domination of Libya and hand all his foreign critics a fait accompli.  That was when loyalist forces, including units under the command of Gaddafi's sons, were unleashed on the rebels and began rolling them back toward the Egyptian border.

And then along came the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that mesmerized the world.   At seismic speeds, Libya dropped off the world's radar screens.   Now that we're all riveted to Japan's nuclear cataclysm (that may be terrifically overblown in the media), Muammar can confidently redouble his efforts.  This probably is, after all, his last, best shot at restoring his power and the security of his family's wealth.

update - latest reports have Gaddafi forces massing to assault and retake Benghazi.  That will pretty much be game, set and match - except for the retribution that will follow once the regime's security apparatus returns.  Well at least we didn't have to sully our hands with some half-assed no fly zone.

Arms Race Update - India Surges Ahead

India's economy may be smaller than its regional rival China's but its appetite for advanced weaponry isn't.   For years to come India is set to be the world's #1 buyer of foreign weaponry, primarily state of the art hardware from Russia.

With defence spending for the coming year pegged at just under $33-billion, India remains light years behind the debt-ridden United States where military spending throughout its vast military/industrial/civilian-warfighting complex is estimated to exceed a trillion dollars annually.

India, which has its own, indigenous military/industrial sector capable of designing and producing advanced missiles and even nuclear powered submarines, builds a lot of Russian equipment, especially aircraft, under licence.   The country is positioned to be Russia's main export customer for its new stealth fighter-interceptor.

China now appears to be locked into a major arms race with India.   Fueling this are border disputes, particularly involving Himalayan headwaters; US/India containment threats; and Indian domination of the Indian Ocean, a major sea lane route for Chinese access to the Middle East.   China employs Pakistan as a proxy to ramp up pressure on India and, in turn, threaten India's access to Middle East and Central Asian fossil fuel resources.

The estimates of India's arms appetite come from the Swedish International Peace Research Institute.  SIPRI (www.sipri.org) has found that, while India accounts for 9% of all weapons imports, close behind are China and South Korea at 6% each followed by Pakistan at 5%.

The United States continues to dominate weapons exports followed by Russia with 23% of the global trade, Germany at 11% and France at 7%.   Arms shipments from 2006 to 2010 were up 24% over the period 2001 to 2005.

What Hedges Said...

War correspondent, author, theologian Chris Hedges has been busy these past years chronicling the decline of his country.   His latest piece is entitled, "This Time, We're Taking the Whole Planet With Us."   An excerpt:

As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break the last vestiges of unions, slashed jobs, froze wages, threw millions of people out of their homes, and stood by idly as we created a permanent underclass of unemployed and underemployed.

The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in “A Short History of Progress,” “… extremists, or ultra-conservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations, including our own, ossify and die. The signs of imminent death may be undeniable. Common sense may cry out for a radical new response. But the race toward self-immolation only accelerates because of intellectual and moral paralysis. As Sigmund Freud grasped in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and “Civilization and Its Discontents,” human societies are as intoxicated and blinded by their own headlong rush toward death and destruction as they are by the search for erotic fulfillment.

The unrest in the Middle East, the implosion of national economies such as those of Ireland and Greece, the increasing anger of a beleaguered working class at home and abroad, the growing desperate human migrations and the refusal to halt our relentless destruction of the ecosystem on which life depends are the harbingers of our own collapse and the consequences of the idiocy of our elite and the folly of globalization. Protests that are not built around a complete reconfiguration of American society, including a rapid dismantling of empire and the corporate state, can only forestall the inevitable. We will be saved only with the birth of a new and militant radicalism which seeks to dethrone our corrupt elite from power, not negotiate for better terms.

A year or two ago I might have said this was crazy talk, that Hedges had lost it.  Now I'm anything but sure. 

Great, Just In Time for an Election, a Liberal Senator Convicted of Fraud

Thanks for nothing, Raymond Lavigne.   The senator was convicted today of fraud and breach of trust.   I'm sure we'll be hearing about him again in the coming months - from the Tories.

We'll have to wait a couple of weeks to find out if Ray gets booted from the Senate but I'm betting the Tory-majority would like nothing better, especially as that would give Harper the opportunity to appoint yet another Conservative, this time from Montreal.

Two former staffers testified that Lavigne filed bogus expense claims for their travel and pocketed the reimbursements.   The judge also found that he used a staffer to cut trees on Lavigne's Wakefield, Que. cottage.

Maybe it's time to start a new, genuinely liberal, Liberal Party from the ground up.  Right now who can reliably say how much rot is in the existing one?

Forget Boycotts, Who Are The Good Guys?

Much as I like the notion of punishing right wing outfits I realized there's probably more impact to be had in figuring out what firms and individuals are actually on the progressive side.   Worrying about which firms not to deal with, what places not to frequent is kind of meaningless if you just take your business to another place with the same leanings.   Besides, it's easier to remember the names of the good guys than to have to also memorize the names of the bad guys.

So, what are the top progressive businesses in Canada?   Who should we all be supporting?   We all have to find our own way a bit on this.   Many of the good guys are local businesses and surely they deserve priority.   Others may be regional or national.   But we need to know.

So, how about listing businesses that support progressivism in Canada?  Let's start putting together a list.

Think BC Hasn't Had Earthquakes Recently? Think Again

Here's a chart showing earthquakes that have hit British Columbia in the past 30 days.

Japan Hit - Yet Again?

The Globe & Mail is reporting that yet another earthquake, a magnitude 6.6 tremblor, has hit Japan.   That would make it three major quakes in three days beginning with a mid-7, then a high-8 and now a mid-6 magnitude earthquake. 

This, following in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake, seems more than a little unusual.   Depending on the epicentre even a magnitude 6 quake can be pretty devastating.

The Globe also has another item speculating on whether a "supermoon" event is triggering this spate of earthquakes.   Apparently the moon is nearing its closest approach to Earth in 18-years although scientists appear to be dismissing that as irrelevant.   The moon will be at its very closest on March 19th.   Just to be on the safe side I think I'll lay in an extra stock of freshwater for the balance of the month.

And This Is How You Fight Back

Corporatism's favourite weapon is money.  They use money to make more money.   Often that comes in the form of financing compliant legislators or skewing, even perverting public opinion.  It's the time tested way of overcoming or sidestepping inconvenient democratic restraints.   Oh, let's be honest - call it democracy rape.

Well you can fight back.   Just ask Wisconsin's firefighters.   A number of them discovered that Madison's M&I Bank, recently acquired by Bank of Montreal, was one of the major financial backers of union-busting Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker.   And so they marched on the bank in protest.   And then they marched into the bank and withdrew their savings.   Bank drafts all around!   Cashier's cheques please.

It seems the M&I bank branch went catatonic, shutting its doors and closing for the day at 3 p.m.   Two retired firefighters withdrew $600,000 between them.   Now M&I is losing those deposits but it also knows its competition is getting that money.   Ooopsie, not nice.

That's how you fight back or at least it's one way.   There are others.   What if even a quarter of Liberal and NDP supporters took the time to identify Harper's biggest corporate supporters and walked out on them, forever?  At the very least they would have to think twice, knowing that they're not "consequence free" any longer

 http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/515607/awesome%3A_wisconsin_firefighters_shut_down_bank_that_funded_walker/#paragraph3

Tsunami Slams Japan

The New York Times reports that a damaging Tsunami has struck Onahama City, sweeping away cars, trucks and buildings, following an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan.   This quake follows a 7.9 magnitude tremblor that hit the country yesterday.

A 10-metre Tsunami warning has been issued for most of the Pacific coast of the main island of Honshu.  Tokyo's Narita airport has been closed.

I stumbled upon this map today.   Wish I hadn't.   It's not a map of what is but of what could be, some say will be.

See that red band, the one that stretches from Tofino to Comox?  I happen to live within that red band only on the east side, thankfully, not the west.   If you look at the map below Tofino you'll see an appendix-like inlet that spans most of the width of the island.   That's the Alberni Inlet at the very end of which lies Port Alberni.  In March, 1964, an earthquake in Alaska triggered a Tsunami that swept the Alberni Inlet more than four hours later.   The waves pummeled Port Alberni (below) and other coastal towns on Vancouver Island.

"State Capture" - Corporatism's Lethal Weapon

It's been a long time since the United States was a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" and never less so than today.   Democracy has unwittingly been supplanted by corporatism and the merger of corporate and political power.  It's happening not just in the US but through the rest of the western democracies in varying degrees.   It is America, however, that provides us with the prime example of rampaging corporatism.

The Brooking Institution's Daniel Kaufmann uses the term "state capture" to describe the situation where Corporatists employ high-level corruption to essentially seize control of state policy.

While it is ...difficult, it is feasible to quantify state capture. The very same vested interests that are responsible for capturing institutions (regulations, policies, laws, etc) also tend to discourage an open and frank debate on the problem of capture. This is particularly the case in official circles of domestic and international elites. But in light of the Wall Street debacle and detailed insider accounts of what transpired before, during and after the 2008 financial crisis, it has become more difficult to mask regulatory and state capture.

However, there is still a particular dimension of state capture that goes relatively unrecognized – the capture of states’ foreign policies vis-à-vis autocratic countries by multinationals and lobbyists who favor the lenient treatment of these autocratic regimes so to pursue commercial objectives. In short, I am talking about state capture in the international arena or international state capture.

The ongoing crisis in Libya is exposing this type of capture. It is becoming increasingly evident that for many years a number of powerful U.S.-based multinational oil companies have been very proactive in trying to influence U.S. foreign policy toward Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Highly paid U.S. consultants and lobbyists, including Ivy League academics and former U.S. ambassadors, have been recruited to burnish the image of Qaddafi, to lobby for pro-Libya policies, to emphasize commercial interests in the country and to laud Libya’s “stability” to the U.S. government and media.

Concern for the totalitarian nature of the regime or its human rights abuses did not feature prominently in any of their work to put it mildly. Furthermore, the well known “revolving door” of lobbying firms, regulators and the regulated industries seems to have played a role in this more international U.S.-Libya case as well. For instance, according to a media report, the founding chairman of the lobbying group, the U.S.-Libya Business Association (USLBA), went on to hold an influential position coordinating energy issues with Middle East countries at the U.S. State Department.

All this and much more, including information on the role of other lobbying and consulting firms played and the list of oil companies behind their efforts, are described in detail in recent reports in The Huffington Post and Mother Jones. The first article contains the now off-site web-based brochure on Libya written by USLBA lobbyists, along with excerpts from a diplomatic cable from U.S. embassy officials in Tripoli released by WikiLeaks. The second article focuses on another lobbying association, USA*Engage, with big oil clients like Halliburton. Only days ago, USA*Engage appeared to be lobbying against imposing U.S. sanctions against Libya.

You may recall Halliburton as the energy company which, with Dick Cheney in charge, lobbied the Clinton government to drop sanctions against the Taliban government of Afghanistan.   This is what these creatures do, it is how they function. 

Corporatism is now insinuating itself between legislators and the voting public whenever and wherever that suits its interests.   None of this could happen without a willingly and thoroughly corrupt political class which is pretty much an apt description for America's "bought and paid for" Congress.   As we transition into a full-fledged petro-state we too will have to be constantly aware of the susceptibility of our own political classes to Corporatist corruption.  But being aware is not enough.   This has to be fought back because it won't go away on its own.

footnote:  I have decided to capitalize Corporatist because it appears to me to be a political entity, a political movement rivaling democracy even quietly usurping it. 

To The Next Liberal Leader - Fight the Right From the Left

That's a lesson the current guy, the amazing vanishing Liberal leader, and his entourage never understood - you can't fight the Right from the right.  That's where you go to disappear from the public mind.  The political centre can't hold when you position yourself to the right of it.   There's only three things you can do from the centre-right - you can sell out your party, you can sell out your country, and you can sell out your countrymen.   Just don't expect the elector to thank you for it at the polls.

And don't think you can make them believe you're progressive by trying the old Mercantile Politics trick.   You can throw them arts funding and day care and home health care and universal education and that's all pretty good but it won't be enough to get you off the hook.   Without a cohesive narrative that directly confronts the Right, your message (if there even is one) is fragmented, incoherent.

The next successful Liberal leader will probably look like a bit of a firebrand compared to the milquetoasts the party has offered up lately.   Trust me, that will be a good thing.  She will have a clear, understandable vision of our country that rings with the disengaged public.   She will not shirk from addressing the several serious problems our country will face this century, in the short and long run.   Hint - we expect people in Ottawa to be able to candidly discuss these challenges with us.  And then she will explain the range of measures we'll need to evaluate to reach the policy decisions we'll need to meet these challenges head on.   She will not, unlike the current mismanagement, bury her head in the  sand.

Americans are slowly waking up to the realization that they're caught up in a class war, one that began years before they understood what was happening.  This is a war that pits the forces of corporatism (and they're not only Republicans) against the, as yet, disorganized forces of progressivism.  With the ascendancy of Bush the Lesser, sockpuppet of Cheney the Dick, the Corporatists succeeded in stealing a huge march on the Progressives while their nation was traumatized in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.   The United States, for the benefit of the Corporatists, was transformed into a warfare state.  American foreign policy was geared to war without end.   Corporate warfighting was seamlessly woven into America's military machine.   The United States, for the benefit and on behalf of the Corporatists, came to spend more on its military institutions and activities than every other nation in the world combined while simultaneously running ruinous deficits yet implementing tax cuts for the very richest.   Now the trick becomes to blame the fiscal nightmare on the working public - from public service unions to ordinary citizens merely expecting the Social Security benefits they paid for their entire working lives.

Canadians aren't embroiled in class warfare as we see it today in the United States, not as such, not as much, not yet.   That said, it's not illogical that we may get dragged into it.   Already the Fraser Institute and its stooges are beginning to champion the notion of tax cuts for the rich, the long-discredited "trickle down" theory.  And our two "leaders," one out of ideological inclination, the other out of spinelessness, would see Canada as bound to march lockstep with our larger, southern cousin whether that be on monetary, tax, trade, energy or environmental policy.   Call it "veiled integration" if you like, the iron fist in a silk glove.

Astonishingly, all is not lost for the Progressives.   In fact they could handily win over the Corporatists.   The important question is not whether they will win but whether they will win in time.   All the skirmishes fought today are a mere prelude to the final battle, the war over global warming and what must be done about it.

Progressive activist and writer, Naomi Klein, says there's a powerful reason the Right treats climate change like outright, villanous heresy - because it will dismember virtually all that they have won in their wars with the Progressives.

"  Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. I think it’s unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They’re not. It’s not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.
 
"  It would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.

"  You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, "you broke it, you bought it," polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.

"  You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.

"  You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.

"  So when you go through this, you see, it challenges everything that they believe in. So they’re choosing to disbelieve it, because it’s easier to deny the science than to say, "  OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart,"   that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that. It’s a lot easier to deny it.

But what I see is that the green groups, a lot of the big green groups, are also in a kind of denial, because they want to pretend that this isn’t about politics and economics, and say, "  Well, you can just change your light bulb. And no, it won’t really disrupt. You can have green capitalism."   And they’re not really wrestling with the fact that this is about economic growth. This is about an economic model that needs constant and infinite growth on a finite planet. So we really are talking about some deep transformations of our economy if we’re going to deal with climate change. And we need to talk about it."

On this one Naomi Klein is absolutely correct (if only because she's saying what I've been writing on this site for years).   The Corporatist ways, the ways advanced by the big money boys like Murdoch and the Koch brothers, are running headlong into reality.   They've positioned themselves on the wrong side of this fight because they're too old, too decrepit and just plain too damned greedy to get on the right side.   They plan to fight this out from their bunkers and, once you get into that mentality, you bolt the door.   They're gambling everything on the hope that some technological "fix" will be found that will make this threat all go away.   In the meantime they'll aggressively fight a rearguard action - and they're doing very well at it.

There's really no getting around it.  18th century capitalism, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geo-politics have run their course.  They have lost their utility.  They have done much for us and much to us.  Harnessed to constant technological advances and seemingly boundless energy resources they enabled our species to triple in numbers in one century and massively increase our per capita consumption at the same time.   The trouble is that more and more and more cannot be infinitely accommodated by a finite planet with very finite resources.   Eventually all the oxygen in the room must be consumed.  For the first time in many generations, we'll be able to dictate far fewer aspects of our future.

The Corporatists are gearing up for a class war they're bound to lose.  Eventually they might even have to resort to force to try to retain "what's theirs" but they can't hope to prevail over the planet itself or the manner in which it dictates we must act in order to keep it liveable for our species.

These truths must percolate up to Canada's political leadership and, especially, the Liberal leader.   There are great challenges ahead, enormous difficulties to be overcome, but there are also plenty of opportunities for a country as naturally advantaged as Canada if we have the foresight to recognize them and utilize them in sufficient time.   Many of those natural advantages we have will be lost or severely diminished by delay and inaction which is what we face if we continue to lash Canadian policy to American policy.

This doesn't mean we have to tilt at windmills, to do the unthinkable, to toss the existing order.   What it means is openly recognizing the need to explore the challenges that face our country, to engage the public in their own future, to evaluate our options and then, having chosen, to begin the lengthy process of timing and implementation.   If we have to abandon "business as usual" as that was understood by so many previous generations, it won't be a matter of whimsical choice but one of necessity.   We must do what is necessary and time is not on our side.

We need new leadership for the Liberal party, a leader more than just a cut above the current offering.  We must have a leader who can fight to restore our political centre, one who can win and that will be a leader who understands you have to fight the Right from the Left.   We need a leader who fully realizes that the world is changing rapidly and that we either ride that change or get left behind.

Oopsie! The Incredible Burgeoning F-35

All along the Tories have been telling Canadians the laughably small number of F35 strike fighters they were buying would cost about $16-billion dollars all in.  That was going to be $9-billion or so to buy the planes, the rest for maintenance and operating costs.

And then Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page got to run the numbers.  He comes in at just under $30-billion - almost twice what the "Harper Government" had promised the Canadian people.   No word yet on how Page figures the Tories fixed the numbers given earlier.

Let's see - thirty billion divided by sixty-five.   Why that's just under a half-billion dollars per aircraft.   Gee but that sounds like a lot for a stealth technology that may be rendered obsolete before these planes ever reach Cold Lake.   That also sounds like a lot of reasons we're going to be stuck with what could quickly turn out to be a white elephant for decades.   If the F35, as many people warn, turns out to be a pig, there won't be any do-overs.   We'll be left to fly the pig for 30-years.

Giving "Fill'er Up" An Entirely Different Meaning

Imagine driving to work on a tank of pee.  It's not as far fetched as it may sound.  A professor in Ohio, Gerardine Botte, is said to have invented a technology that transforms urine into hydrogen.

Botte recognized that urine contains two compounds that could be a source of hydrogen: ammonia and urea. Place an electrode in wastewater, apply a gentle current, and voila: hydrogen gas that can be used to power a fuel cell.

Her system operates similarly to the electrolysis of water, a process that can be used to produce hydrogen for fuel cells - except that ammonia and urea hold their hydrogen atoms less tightly than water does, so less energy is required to split them off. Botte isn't the only scientist with her mind in the sewer. A group of scientists in the UK, for example, is working on a fuel cell powered directly by urine.

Botte's technology has the greatest potential for power generation in settings where large numbers of people gather - airports and sports stadiums, for example. An office building with 200 to 300 workers could generate 2 kilowatts of power, Botte has calculated. Granted, that's not enough to power the building, but every drop in the bucket helps.


This technology is thought to be perfect for feedlots where a thousand head of cattle could generate up to 50 kilowatts of power.

It's a Start - Philadelphia Cardinal Benches 21 Priests

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has suspended 21-RC priests identified as suspected child abusers in a grand jury report.

The two-year grand jury investigation into abuse in the archdiocese of Philadelphia resulted in charges against two priests, a former priest and a Catholic schoolteacher who are accused of raping boys. A former high-ranking church official was accused of transferring problem priests to new parishes without revealing they had been the subject of sex abuse complaints.

Since 2002, when the national abuse crisis erupted in the archdiocese of Boston, US dioceses have barred hundreds of accused clergymen from public church work or removed them permanently from the priesthood. However, the archdiocese of Philadelphia has only taken action now.

The grand jury named 37 priests who remained in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse. After the release of the report, the second such investigation in the city in six years, Rigali vowed to take its calls for further reforms seriously.

In addition to the 21 priests placed on leave on Tuesday, three others named by the grand jury were suspended a week after the report's release in February. Five other priests would have been suspended but one was already on leave, two were "  incapacitated and have not been in active ministry"   and two were no longer priests in the archdiocese but were members of another religious order that was not identified.

Welcome to the Age of Philanthro-Feudalism

According to GritTV's Laura Flanders, America is showing China the way forward - philanthro-feudalism.  Cue the Koch Brothers:

More GRITtv

Polar Ice Melting Faster, Raising Seas

Same old, same old.   Yet again we've discovered that the polar ice fields are melting faster than we had predicted causing sea levels to rise faster than forecast.

This is becoming a bit stale.   Every three or four months another study comes out saying the same thing - the ice is melting faster than we predicted.   That, however, is not in itself the real story of these successive announcements.

The real story is that the polar ice melt is accelerating much faster than we thought it would.  It continues to increase, faster and faster and faster than we imagined.  It is repeatedly becoming faster than we believed it would become faster and it's the element of ever faster that is the important part.

Today's BBC report warns that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica will soon become the biggest driver of sea level rise.   Sea levels are now rising about 3mm a year, just over an inch a decade.   That doesn't sound too bad but the important part is that the rate of rise keeps increasing.    And, as it increases, so too will the coastal regions impacted by it.

Sea level rise operates in conjunction with another climate change phenomenon - an increase in the frequency and severity of major storm events.   These combine to create a variety of problems from coastal storm surge inundation and erosion to salinization of groundwater resources.   Around the world a disproportionate concentration of people live in coastal areas.   Those in the most low-lying coastal areas are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming-driven climate change.   Two days ago The Guardian cited a report warning that climate change will "wreak havoc on Britain's coastline by 2050."  There are also rarely mentioned studies that predict large parts of America's eastern seaboard will be hammered by these very same conditions and could face large-scale population displacement.

How Do You Possibly Defend this Lawsuit?

Let's say that you had a new antibiotic.   And let's say that you wanted to find out if it was effective against syphilis and gonorrhea.   And let's say that you figured the best way to test it would be to infect another country's prisoners and mentally ill with those diseases without their consent or knowledge.

And then, many decades later, all this comes out and you have to apologize for what even you call these "reprehensible" experiments.

These events happened in Guatemala from 1946 to 1949.   Now lawyers for those survivors and the victims' families have given US attorney general until Friday to indicate if Washington is willing to settle this out of court.  If not, they sue.

What can America possibly do except settle?   They might be able to come up with procedural or jurisdictional defences but the political costs, domestically and internationally, would be gargantuan.   The report that broke the decades of silence, written by Susan Reverby, is riveting.

Now Is Not the Time for Crazy People to Rule

We live in dangerous times.   Like Easter Islanders we live in times of potentially existential threats of our own making.   The survival of our civilization can no longer be taken for granted.  If we are to avert the worst impacts of the way of life we have developed over the past three centuries, change on a global dimension will be required.   There is simply no getting away from that.   It is an imperative that, ignored, will wreak havoc on us.

Clear headed alertness and steely resolve will be essential to devising and implementing the measures we need to adapt to and mitigate global warming and the basket of other fundamental challenges we face - deforestation, desertification, air/water/soil contamination, species migration and extinction, disease migration, overpopulation, resource depletion and exhaustion, nuclear proliferation and spreading terrorism, and, perhaps greatest of all, the looming freshwater crisis.   These challenges, potential threats, are often powerfully linked, interconnected such that solving any of them means solving them all.  Yet, even on just one front, global warming-driven climate change, international leadership is wavering.

Today, in the Financial Times, International Energy Agency Chief Economist, Fatih Birol, and Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change chair Nicholas Stern, warn that, at the World Economic Forum, policymakers seemed to have become disengaged on the climate change threat.   Now with political upheaval, economic uncertainty and soaring oil prices, the window of opportunity may be closing.

Birol and Stern call for an end to nearly $600-billion in annual, fossil fuel subsidies; a benchmarking system to maximize energy efficiency; measures such as effective carbon pricing as a disincentive to old, energy-inefficient infrastructure and a positive incentive to introduction of new, energy efficient technologies, and advanced fuels.

Of course will any heed Birol and Stern's call?   How about the nation that purports to stand as the leadership model for the rest of the world?  With Congressional Republicans firmly in the denialist camp and also in control of the House, you truly do have rule by crazy people.   They're far too busy working to dismantle the EPA to bother with these warnings.  In fact, you could easily call them today's "pro-carbon lobby."

Well then, what about our own Canada?  When we've got the two top political spots occupied by inveterate Tar Sanders, unapologetic Bitumen Boosters, enthusiastic Fossil Fuelers, we've also got crazy people at the helm.  One thing is clear, when it comes to the Conservative and the Liberal leadership, Canada needs and deserves an awful lot better.

 

The Assault on Reason

"America's secession from objective reality."    When I read them, those words seared into my mind.  That is, indeed, the path the American people have been on virtually since the US Supreme Court threw the 2000 elections to George w. Bush.

The phrase was crafted by the Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts Jr. in an op-ed he wrote about of all people, FOX News chairman Roger Ailes.   There's a lot of speculation that Ailes may be in trouble for allegedly counselling former publishing whiz Judith Regan to lie to federal investigators vetting former New York Police commissioner Bernard Kerik.  He was Bush's pick to become Homeland Security director and Ailes, apparently, wanted Regan to dummy up about her affair with Kerik which, apparently, she did.

What gets under Pitts' skin is one Barry Ritholtz, a financial analyst, author and TV commentator who, on his blog, is said to have reported that Ailes is to be indicted over the Regan business.   When pressed for a source, Ritholtz said he heard it from an older man, an "upper East Side Democrat" he ran into at an airport.   When Salon.com pushed Ritholtz further he glibly replied,  “If it’s true we’ll find out. If it’s not, no big deal.”

And here, let us define what the point is not. It is not the likeability or lack thereof, of Roger Ailes. It is not the bias of the supposed news organization he runs. It is not even the accuracy of Ritholtz’s report. It is, rather, those three words: “no big deal.”

Lord, where is Walter Cronkite when you need him?
 ...But: if we are all journalists, we all ought to be governed by journalism’s most sacred directive. Meaning accuracy. Get the facts straight.

...One encounters little fealty to that directive in surveying the landscape of new media, overrun as it is by true believers for whom accuracy is subordinate to ideology and facts useful only to the degree they can be bent, shaped or outright disregarded in service to that ideology. The result, as many have noted, is a political discourse distinguished by increasing incoherence and intellectual incontinence, an empty shouting match better suited to a fifth grade schoolyard than to adults analyzing the great issues of the day.
  
No big deal?

One can imagine a libel lawyer in the employ of Roger Ailes someday having a field day with that quote. Meantime, let the rest of us regard it as a signpost on the road toward America’s secession from objective reality. What is at stake is nothing less than our ability to know. From that springs our ability to process, extrapolate, debate, reason, conclude. We are losing those things.

Isn't That What Prisons Are For?

Two-thirds of American states cut mental health funding over the past two years.  Reuters reports that the US National Alliance on Mental Health has produced some pretty disturbing numbers and, naturally, the Red (meat) states are ahead of the pack.  The top four places went to Kentucky with 47 percent, Alaska with 35 percent, and South Carolina and Arizona both with 23 percent.    Arizona?  As in Jared Loughner and Gabrielle Giffords along with 12 other wounded and six dead Arizona?

"Cutting mental health means that costs only get shifted to emergency rooms, schools, police, local courts, jails and prisons,"   said NAMI executive director Michael Fitzpatrick. "  The taxpayer still pays the bill."

America's Class War - The Underhanded Battle to Destroy Public Service Unions

In terms of credible American newspaper chains, McClatchey Newspapers (formerly Knight-Ridder) towers above all others.   In the wake of the 9/11 trauma, it alone disputed the Bush regimes lies to justify invading Iraq.  McClatchey lives up to its motto, "Truth to Power."

Another shining example of this comes from the news service's analysis of the public service pension scam being used by radical rightwing US governors to break the backs of public service unions.

...there's simply no evidence that state pensions are the current burden to public finances that their critics claim.

Pension contributions from state and local employers aren't blowing up budgets. They amount to just 2.9 percent of state spending, on average, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College puts the figure a bit higher at 3.8 percent.


Though there's no direct comparison, state and local pension contributions approximate the burden shouldered by private companies. The nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute estimates that retirement funding for private employers amounts to about 3.5 percent of employee compensation.

 Nor are state and local government pension funds broke. They're underfunded, in large measure because — like the investments held in 401(k) plans by American private-sector employees — they sunk along with the entire stock market during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. And like 401(k) plans, the investments made by public-sector pension plans are increasingly on firmer footing as the rising tide on Wall Street lifts all boats.

Boston College researchers project that if the assets in state and local pension plans were frozen tomorrow and there was no more growth in investment returns, there'd still be enough money in most state plans to pay benefits for years to come.

 

What McClatchey has again shown is the compulsive perfidy of today's far right to fabricate narratives intended to frighten and mislead the public enough to permit them to achieve ulterior ends.   This is rank class warfare by plutocrats who will do everything in their power to disguise their campaigns.

How We Won Canada's Afghan War

The trouble with a war like the one that's been fought for the past decade in Afghanistan is that there are so few, if any, clear cut "winners" or "losers."  Over the span of so many years things are bound to change, can't be helped.  That includes objectives, the goalposts you set up before the opening kickoff.

Back in 2001 there was a reason for initiative a certain type of war in Afghanistan.  To the best of my memory the reason was to sweep aside a Taliban government that was giving shelter to al Qaeda so we could get our hands on (i.e. kill) the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks and especially one Osama bin Laden.  One dead lanky corpse seemed to be what the whole thing was all about.

America came pretty close to scoring on that drive, close but no cigar.   They toppled the Taliban regime and drove the al Qaeda management into the hills.  For a while they even had bin Laden himself holed up in a cave in Tora Bora, ready for the plucking.   But they took their eyes off the ball and the kick went wide - no score.   The most powerful military force in the history of the world, led by among the most inept political masters, wasn't able to winkle out one evil bugger from a cave.  That is one for the books, it truly is.

Then Georgie's attention deficit disorder kicked in and he decided to move on to the sands of Mesopotamia.   The American units bin Laden had to fear most were ordered to pack up their gear and move on.   They weren't going to be gone long - the whole thing would be wrapped up in 60-days, 90 at the outside.  They had that directly from the most incompetent political leadership America has endured for well more than a century.

In marching on Baghdad, the Bushies figured that America's NATO allies could hold the fort in Afghanistan, babysit if you like, until US forces returned.  So we grabbed our rifles and mini-jeeps (remember the Itlis?) and protected Kabul and Karzai.

When it became obvious that Iraq wasn't going the way the Bushies had stupidly expected we got our arms twisted to do some real soldiering.   We were going to take on responsibility for Kandahar province.   Now safely-retired ex-general Ricky Hillier sized up that mission and figured we could tame Kandahar with a force of just 2,500 soldiers.   Of that total, about a thousand would be actual fighting troops.  That Ricky was no brighter than the Bushies was apparent when he swaggered up to the microphones and announced that Canadian soldiers were going to Kandahar to "kill scumbags" that he numbered at "a few dozen."

There you have it.  A.  a few dozen.   B.  scumbags.    The question then becomes, have we actually killed a few dozen scumbags?   And the answer is a resounding "yes."  We've killed lots and lots and lots of dozens of scumbags in Kandahar.   By Hillier's own definition, we won our war in Afghanistan way back, certainly by 2006 latest.

So why didn't we count the feet, divide by two, and say "mission accomplished" back in 2006 and then split for home?   Well that's because of something called "mission creep."   That is when you begin expanding a military operation, changing your initial objectives.   Ever so quietly we got into things like nation building (even if only in a ridiculously half-assed way) and making Afghanistan safe for democracy.   Who can forget Harper getting up on his hind legs and puffing up his chest about saving Afghanistan and seeing the job through, never cutting and running?

In other words, we weren't content with having won our Afghan War.   We had to keep moving the goalposts until we had made any chance of ever achieving the objective completely impossible.

Is Gaddafi Packing His Bags

It looks like Muammar Gaddafi will soon be following Charlie Sheen to the unemployment line.  When you get crazy crazy somebody eventually shows you the door.

Various Arab media outlets have been reporting that Gaddafi is trying to work out an exit strategy which probably includes tens of billions of dollars in parting gifts and some guarantee of not winding up like Slobodan Milosevic in the dock before the International Criminal Court.   Muammar, it seems, isn't quite as crazy as Charlie which is a good thing given that there are a couple of million Libyans who would like nothing better than to see the boss at the business end of a short rope.

Al Jazeera reports the anti-Gaddafi forces have offered Muammar & Company a promise of immunity of some sort if they clear out within 72-hours.


"If he leaves Libya immediately, during 72 hours, and stops the bombardment, we as Libyans will step back from pursuing him for crimes," Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the opposition National Council, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

He said the deadline would not be extended beyond 72 hours.

"  Based on our love for our country we have proposed to the [Gaddafi's] indirect negotiators that a solution can be reached,"  Jalil told Al Jazeera.

"  Conditions are that firstly he stops all combat in the fields, secondly that his departure is within 72 hours; thirdly we may waive our right of domestic prosecution ... for the crimes of oppression, persecution, starvation and massacres."

It's hard to imagine Gaddafi being crazy enough to bank on these assurances.  Matters of prosecution and amnesty are state functions and the rebel forces can hardly be construed as a state.   Even if Gaddafi was sufficiently delusional to believe these promises there are plenty of sane, shrewd and ruthless people propping him up who won't be taken in.  I think if Gaddafi actually wavers one of them might well put a bullet in the boss for selling them out.

If We've Already Decided Muammar Has to Go, Why Is He Still Around?

Just what are we playing at?  His recent, endless rants leave no doubt but that he's batshit crazy (my guess is paresis).  He appears intent on subjecting his people to what most closely resembles the fuhrer's end game.  So why are we sitting on the sidelines allowing this grotesque and bloody farce drag out?

We don't have to invade.   The rebels are strong enough that all they need is a little air support.  Crater the guy's runways.  Eliminate his attack helos and fighters in their shelters.  Surgically eliminate his armour.   Without those assets, Ghadaffi is finito.  His own people will take care of the rest.

If there is one thing the West knows how to do - successfully - it's how to dismember the very sort of force that keeps Muammar in the game.   That is truly a matter of pushing on an open door.  It's hard to imagine it would take more than one fleet carrier air wing to end this bloodshed within just a few days.  Let's just do it.

Is Beck Too Much Even For FOX?

Is FOX News ready to ditch Glenn Beck?  New York Times media columnist, David Carr, claims that FOX execs have about had it with this lunatic:

He still has numbers that just about any cable news host would envy and, with about two million viewers a night, outdraws all his competition combined. But the erosion is significant enough that Fox News officials are willing to say — anonymously, of course; they don’t want to be identified as criticizing the talent — that they are looking at the end of his contract in December and contemplating life without Mr. Beck.


On the other side, people who work for Mr. Beck point out that he could live without Fox News. Unlike some other cable hosts, Mr. Beck has a huge multiplatform presence: he has sold around four million books, is near the top of talk-radio ratings, has a growing Web site called The Blaze, along with a stage performance that still packs houses. Forbes estimated that his company, Mercury Radio Arts, had more than $30 million in revenue.

How could a breakup between Mr. Beck and Fox News — a bond that seemed made in pre-Apocalyptic heaven — come to pass? They were never great friends to start with: Mr. Beck came to Fox with a huge radio show and had been on CNN Headline News, so he did not owe his entire career to Fox and frequently went off-message. The sniping between Fox News executives and Mr. Beck’s team began soon after he went on the air in 2009.

Many on the news side of Fox have wondered whether his chronic outrageousness — he suggested that the president has “a deep-seated hatred for white people” — have made it difficult for Fox to hang onto its credibility as a news network. Some 300 advertisers fled the show, leaving sponsorship to a slew of gold bullion marketers whose message dovetails nicely with Mr. Beck’s end-of-times gospel. Both parties go to some lengths to point out that that the discussion has nothing to do with persistent criticism from the left.

The idea of FOX without Beck isn't all that appealing.  If anything, Glenn Beck shows FOX as it truly is.   He IS what FOX is all about and nobody, including Hannity and O'Reilly, shows that more clearly than Glenn Beck.  This guy is the unhealing scab.

The Century of Revolution - Class Warfare - Get Used to It

If they're right, the world as you've known it will never be the same again.  "They" are the seers who, in growing numbers, are predicting widespread upheaval, revolution if you like, during the 21st century.   To some, the 21st is shaping up to be The Century of Revolution.  I suspect they're right.

The latest voice to join the choir is Trend Journal publisher Gerald Celente.  He foresees a perfect storm of unemployment, austerity and corruption sparking popular uprisings of the sort we've seen in North Africa spreading around the world.

"  We had forecast that there would be a wave of protests raging throughout the world in response to three elements: high unemployment, draconian austerity measures and corruption,"   Celente explains in a telephone interview.


"  What you're seeing in North Africa and the Middle East is the same three elements,"   he insists. "  It has nothing to do with autocracy or democracy."
Instead, Celente says anyone who sees the world as he does will recognize that there's actually a form of neo-feudalism at work, pitting oppressed "  peasants" against a rich ruling class unwilling to share the wealth.

"  You have people between the ages of 18 and 30, their hormones are raging, and they're raging mad. You've got no limits at that age, you're not afraid of anything and you have nothing to lose,"   he says. "  The difference is, these peasants are educated, they know the deal."


"  Europe is next,"   Celente continued, explaining that in his view the uprisings in North Africa and the Mideast were not triggered by events in Tunisia. Instead, he believes they're the inevitable result of political, social and economic conditions shared by a vast, growing array of countries including, but not limited to Albania, Croatia, Romania, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Soaring unemployment, cuts to pensions and benefits, rising fees for diminishing services, across-the-board value-added tax increases and declining minimum wages are all common factors to some degree, he says. Combine those with the numbers of young people who are still living with their parents, struggling to find work and not seeing much hope for the future, and Celente says you've got some powerful reasons to not only get angry over the growing gap between rich and poor, but to do something about it. 

"  We have to tax the multi-billonaires, we have to stop all of these tax rip-offs of the multinationals, and go back to when it worked better."
According to Celente, that means reinstituting laws that curb banks' abilities "  to become like casinos,"   and generally reverting to the state of affairs before NAFTA.

"  It's not free trade. It's manufacturers going to slave labour countries, getting their products made, and shipping them back at a mark-up. Let's call it what it is."

Celente offers a similarly stark view of the steps taken by world leaders to curb the recent global economic slowdown. Rather than fix the world's financial problems, Celente says policies of tax cuts, austerity measures and stimulus spending have instead served to reinflate economic bubbles that are near-bursting."

" This is not capitalism. The merger of state and corporate powers by definition -- from someone who knew a thing or two about it: Mussolini -- is facism,"   Celente asserts. "  And fascism has come to America." 

I believe Celente is absolutely right, at least in his conclusion.  Oddly enough he has left out two powerful factors that will also drive social upheaval - climate change and the looming freshwater crisis.   These will greatly stoke the fires of discontent.


It's curious that these issues have not even reached the radar screens of Canada's political establishment.   Iggy, for example, will focus on day care, family benefits and universal education but income inequality won't even cross his lips.  I think Ignatieff is missing the boat on this entirely and that's unfortunate because these problems won't go away on their own and will only become more intractable the longer they're ignored.   Canada deserves better.

I Would Be a Lot More Comfortable with the F35 - IF...

The F-35 wouldn't be nearly as bad a pick for the Canadian Forces if it's stealth advantage was real, if it actually worked as promised.

I don't mean real as in today.  I mean real during its operational lifetime, the 20-years or so Canadian pilots will be stuck with it.   For the sake of its stealth capability they'll be sacrificing a lot of safety, a lot of other advantages their potential adversaries will field.

The F-35 is a single engine aircraft.   When the engine goes, the pilot has to get out fast.   That's not so bad if you're over Texas where the climate is survivable and you're never very far from some form of help.   It is very bad if you're in the high Arctic in February and hundreds of miles from anyone.  Very bad.

The F-35 is a marginal performer.  It can't out-run, climb or turn fourth and fifth generation Russian fighters.  It has limited range and a limited weapons payload.  It gives up everything for the sake of supposed invisibility.  Overcome that stealth technology, however, and it seems to be something of a sitting duck.

The F-35 wouldn't be the first time the Americans have got it wrong.  It wouldn't be the first time the Americans have been burned by over-reliance on advanced technology of doubtful utility.

Back in the 60's, the US came out with the F-4 Phantom, long-range fighter/interceptor.  It was supposed to be the be-all and end-all in fighter technology.  It was such a breakthrough that, henceforth, enemy aircraft would be destroyed beyond visual range by advanced air to air missiles.   Unlike every fighter since the Great War, the Phantom would carry no gun because there'd be nothing left flying for it to shoot down in any case.  The dogfight was declared a thing of the past.

Then reality set in.  America went to war in Viet Nam.   The F-4's Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles, its sole air to air weapons, proved horribly unreliable and, when the enemy got close in, the US Navy pilots had no gun to fight with.  Eventually the Americans overcame their problems but the object lesson is they went into a war with invalid assumptions and over-reliance on questionable technology that failed when it was needed.

It hasn't been a lack of high-tech advantage or enormously superior firepower that denied our side success in Viet Nam, Iraq or Afghanistan.   In the more recent conflicts we even had our 'enemy' massively outnumbered.   Yet whether Viet Nam, Iraq or Afghanistan, we've never managed to get them to surrender.  They just wait until we've had enough and go home.

Which brings me back to the F-35.  Is it today's F-4?  Are we betting the farm on a technological advantage that may not last beyond the first hostile engagement?  The Phantom of four decades ago was a fine aircraft that had some fixable problems.   All it needed was better missiles and the installation of a machine cannon.    It still had enormous speed and range.   How fixable is the F-35 if its stealth advantage is negated?   How do you make a plane that can't fly fast enough fly faster?   How do you make a plane that can't climb fast enough climb faster?   How do you make a plane that can't turn fast enough turn faster?  The simple answer - you can't.

So, since we're apparently committed to walking this tightrope of invisibility, is it unreasonable to make sure somebody has put up a safety net beneath us?  If the F-35 loses its cloak of invisibility, we're either going to have to put our pilots at unacceptable risks or else just buy something that does work.   Shouldn't we be getting somebody's guarantee that this stealth technology will work as promised for the useful lifetime of this aircraft?

With the number of fighter aircraft Canada can afford, we are of necessity putting all our eggs in just one basket.   When you're in that spot, you need to make sure you've got a sound basket.

British Court Calls Anonymous Blog Comments "Pub Talk"

A lot of bloggers have worried about remarks made by "anonymous" commenters on their posts.   The cloak of anonymity does indeed seem to be the refuge of the extremist and that's commonly where you'll find most offensive remarks, some of which may seem libelous.

Britain's High Court had to wade into this very issue in a case involving the often controversial paper, The Daily Mail.   The long and short - a woman complained to a municipal authority about some bum in a park; the municipal authorities found the woman's complaint threatening and added her name to a list of potentially violent people; she sued the authorities and won damages for libel.  The Daily Mail carried a report on the case on its web site and that attracted a couple of "anonymous" comments that the woman found defamatory.  She then sued the paper demanding it disclose the identities of the commenters so she could then sue them.

Madam Justice Sharp dismissed the claim.

"It was fanciful to suggest that a sensible and reasonable reader would understand those comments as being anything more than 'pub talk'.  ...The postings were of two lines and were effectively posted anonymously by members of the public who did not report to have knowledge of the matters they concerned. It is important to put the postings into context as to their meaning and what they were commenting on."

Now this is, of course, a British case and the court there was following, in part, the European Convention on Human Rights.   A Canadian judge might see the same facts differently but the specific finding that most anonymous comments are so much "pub talk" is certainly helpful.

C'mon. Killing Kids Gathering Firewood?

Nine Afghan kids out gathering firewood were turned into pulp by a NATO helicopter gunship.  The helo crew apparently mistook the children for Talib fighters.

An eleven year old was the sole survivor.   This is his account of the massacre:

“We were almost done collecting the wood when suddenly we saw the helicopters come,” said Hemad, who, like many Afghans, has only one name. 

“There were two of them. The helicopters hovered over us, scanned us and we saw a green flash from the helicopters. Then they flew back high up, and in a second round they hovered over us and started shooting. They fired a rocket which landed on a tree. The tree branches fell over me and shrapnel hit my right hand and my side.”

The tree, Hemad said, saved his life by covering him so that he could not be seen by the helicopters, which, he said, “shot the boys one after another.”

US General David Petraeus apologized, calling the incident a "tragedy."  BFD, Dave.

Can we go now?

Crazy Talk - Gaddafi & Sheen

Muammar Gaddafi and Charlie Sheen have been ranting and raving lately and, oddly enough, it's getting difficult to tell them apart.  The Guardian think so too and has posted a fun quiz to test your ability to sort them out.

Bonne chance!

Thatcher, Reagan & Mulroney - And Their Snake Oil

As a person ages it gets harder to believe.   With time the disconnect between belief and reality, between perception and fact, becomes inescapable, undeniable.  Some truths, usually value notions such as kindness and compassion and the like, weather the scrutiny of passing time better than other concepts, particularly the ideological sort.   You begin to do the unthinkable - you look down at the narrow, slippery ledge and realize how easy it is for all of us to lose our footing.

In my time we were sold the illusion of globalization.  We were conned into believing we could abandon those menial, manufacturing jobs and instead embrace the information age, the "knowledge economy" of the future.  We were no longer people of thermoses and lunch pails and steel toed boots.   Let the developing world have those chores.   We would be a society that extracted great wealth through processing and transmitting information.   This would be the line by which we maintained the divide between the new world and the old.

And who sold us this nonsense?   A big-haired ideologue, a rank opportunist and a borderline senile B-movie star.   Thatcher, Mulroney and Reagan.  Why did we believe them?   What were we thinking?  These three tore down vibrant, resilient societies and created a schism that perpetrated a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the ultra-rich.   The rich got oh so much richer by outsourcing all those once expensive manufacturing jobs to poor nations with low wages and lax regulations.   In their wake they left us with the promise of a glorious future in the knowledge economy.

Fair is fair.   We yielded our manufacturing sector.   We even dropped our trousers on trade and tariffs and surrendered our markets to ever less than fair competition.   And, having done that, having undone ourselves, we waited for our new legacy, the knowledge economy.  In the meantime we flipped burgers and kept busy selling each other those runners from Vietnam.

Today it's obvious that Thatcher, Mulroney and Reagan duped us on that knowledge economy business.  That too has been outsourced.  Most of us have had to deal with those technical service call centres where "Ashley" greets you with a heavy Mumbai accent.  Accounting firms use number crunchers oceans away to process tax returns.  My telephone company that earns its profits from me and my fellow Canadians outsources its tele-marketing campaign to South Asians.

Peter Wilby, former editor of The Independent and The New Statesman, writes in The Guardian, that, across the West, the middle class decline has only begun and tomorrow is not going to be a better day:

"  Knowledge work" , supposedly the west's salvation, is now being exported like manual work. A global mass market in unskilled labour is being quickly succeeded by a market in middle-class work, particularly for industries, such as electronics, in which so much hope of employment opportunities and high wages was invested. As supply increases, employers inevitably go to the cheapest source. A chip designer in India costs 10 times less than a US one. The neoliberals forgot to read (or re-read) Marx. "  As capital accumulates the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse."
We are familiar with the outsourcing of routine white-collar "  back office"   jobs such as data inputting. But now the middle office is going too. Analysing X-rays, drawing up legal contracts, processing tax returns, researching bank clients, and even designing industrial systems are examples of skilled jobs going offshore. Even teaching is not immune: last year a north London primary school hired mathematicians in India to provide one-to-one tutoring over the internet. Microsoft, Siemens, General Motors and Philips are among big firms that now do at least some of their research in China. The pace will quicken. The export of "  knowledge work"   requires only the transmission of electronic information, not factories and machinery. Alan Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has estimated that a quarter of all American service sector jobs could go overseas.

Wilby's comment is bleak but is worth a careful read.  It is still not too late to address this problem and find "made in Canada" responses.   Much as we moan about being "hewers of wood and drawers of water," that wood and that water is a buffer in a world increasingly short of both.   This may be a good moment to review how we keep our natural resources from going the same way as our manufacturing sector.