A Lot of You Have Been Waiting to See This

It's a screen capture from a beheading scene during the first season of Game of Thrones.   Go ahead, take a close look.   Who does that look like?   Whose head is that on a stake?

Full marks if you guessed George w. hisself.   According to dlisted.com, the production company just ordered heads from their prosthetic supplier and George accidently wound up perched atop a stake.  Yeah, sure.

From "Citizens United" to Corporate Electoral Blackmail

Hey, it's just corporations exercising their newfound political voices.   According to Politico, U.S. defence contractors are planning to throw a wrench into November's presidential and congressional elections by issuing hundreds of thousands of layoff notices just before voting day.   The message is brutal and blunt - re-elect Obama and kiss your lovely paycheque goodbye.

“If it really did happen, if hundreds of thousands of layoff notices went out right before the election, it could hurt incumbents – mainly, the president,” said Todd Harrison, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“You could do a layoff notice that just informs people they might be laid off, and you could do that very broadly,” Harrison added. “Do companies make the notices go to all of their employees, half of their employees or just the 10 percent of their employees who are likely to be affected?”

But, like most extortion, the problem can be avoided - for a price.   In this case that would be rescinding the defence cuts well prior to the election.

And, if you didn't believe that America has been transformed to junk democracy in favour of corporatism, this should clear your head.

Is China Grooming Africa for Half a Billion Surplus Chinese?

The theory, published in Asia Times, is that Chinese authorities have figured out their homeland can support a population of 700-million, max.   With current numbers at 1.2-billion, China has to jettison hundreds of millions of people.

"While a cottage industry of "China-in-Africa" experts has emerged over the past five years, on balance their explanations of why a magnetic like pull exists between the two continents is unsatisfactory. Certainly no one denies an array of state-to-state economic and geopolitical incentives recognized by both sides. After all, the simplified resources-for-infrastructure win-win is rather obvious.

"Yet and still neither of those benefits - Africa's gain of badly needed dams, roads, pipelines and bridges and China's receipt of desperately needed oil and minerals - is as compelling as the widely rumored and highly plausible determination that China's mainland can only sustain 700 million persons. Therefore at least 300 million to 500 million of its current 1.2 billion population must go elsewhere. The "elsewhere" is Africa... "

It's difficult to imagine how, short of an outright military takeover, China could compel African states to become a repository for surplus Chinese.    Then again the idea that China may not be able to sustain a permanent population in excess of 700-million is more than plausible and does beg the question of now the Too Many Peoples' Republic can resolve what could pose a mortal, internal threat to the state.

Rounding the Square Pegs

Rounding square pegs.   That, in a nutshell, is the message being delivered by the Royal Society and 104 other national science academies, to delegates of the Rio+20 Earth Summit if mankind is to get through the 21st century.

Rounding square pegs means two things - reducing overpopulation and over-consumption.   Overpopulation is primarily the obligation of the emerging and developing nations, particularly China, India and the burgeoning African states.   Over-consumption falls mainly to the developed nations, the voracious consumers of the lion's share of just about everything.

We know what curbing overpopulation means.   Overpopulated countries must trim their numbers, preferably by curbing reproductive rates.   Over-consumption, now that's far trickier.   What it means is rich folks buying less, consuming less, using less, wasting less and redistributing some of what they've come to expect as theirs to the have-nots.

Yeah, that's right.   This is the great "socialist plot" to redistribute wealth from those who believe they've "earned" it to those who they believe haven't.

Good luck with that.

Now Will You Stop Killing Whales, You Bastards?

The Japanese supposedly go whaling for "scientific research" purposes.   Hard to tell what they're looking for.    Maybe they're exploring new ways to kill whales or the process by which they die when you explode stuff inside them.   But they were probably killing them for the same purpose they slaughter dolphins - for meat to throw on grocery store shelves at home.

Well it turns out the Japanese are losing their appetite for whale meat.   Of last year's 1,211 tonnes harvested, 908 went unsold despite 13-auctions.

The Institute of Cetacean Research blamed low demand on the complicated auction procedure and reluctance among food suppliers to attract criticism from anti-whaling groups such as Sea Shepherd.

"We could not achieve the results we had anticipated," an institute official told Kyodo.

Maybe it's time the Japanese just packed it in.

IMF Chief - Inequality, the Environmnent, Social Upheaval are Linked

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, warns we can either accept a realistic approach to sustainable growth or face declining incomes, environmental calamity and social upheaval.

"...she said the rich should restrain their demands for higher incomes while there are still 200 million people worldwide looking for a job and poverty is on the rise.

"In fact, tensions are on the rise again, and financial stability risks have once more moved front and centre. Great uncertainty hangs over global prospects.
"
Too many regions today are still stuck in a trap of low growth and high unemployment," she said.

Ahead of the summit, she said taxes on petrol and other carbon fuels could raise billions of dollars for green investment projects. "Right now, less than 10% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are covered by formal pricing programmes. Only a handful of cities charge for the use of gridlocked roads. Farmers in rich countries are undercharged – if charged at all – for increasingly scarce water resources."

She added: "Many countries continue to subsidise polluting energy systems. These subsidies are costly for the budget and costly for the planet. Countries should reduce them. But in doing so, they must protect vulnerable groups by tightly focusing subsidies on products used by poorer people, and by strengthening social safety nets."

If this sounds like so much pinko pap, recall that Legarde was a decidedly right-wing former French finance minister.   What she is doing is merely pointing out the obvious witches' brew of calamities coming our way if our leadership persists in looking the other way - that is to say, governing just like Stephen Harper.   Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, realistically taxing greenhouse gas emissions, pricing water resources, the three things most feared by the Tar Sanders and their political minions.

China's Toxic Farmland Time Bomb

China has a bagful of environmental challenges.    You name it, they got it.   Polluted waterways, contaminated air, greenhouse gas emissions that confound attempts to measure them - the lot.  When it comes to China's land situation, we commonly focus on desertification - the exhaustion and degradation of arable farmland and its transformation into sterile desert.   Now the focus is shifting - to land pollution.

Nowhere is the global push to restore degraded land likely to be more important, complex and expensive than in China, where vast swaths of the soil are contaminated by arsenic and heavy metals from mines and factories.

Scientists told the Guardian that this is likely to prove a bigger long-term problem than air and water pollution, with potentially dire consequences for food production and human health.

Zhou Jianmin, director of the China Soil Association, estimated that one-tenth of China's farmland was affected. "The country, the government and the public should realise how serious the soil pollution is," he said. "More areas are being affected, the degree of contamination is intensifying and the range of toxins is increasing."

Other estimates of soil pollution range as high as 40%, but an official risk assessment is unlikely to be made public for several years.

...Unlike in Europe where persistent organic pollutants are the main concern, Chen Tongbin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said China's worst soil contamination is from arsenic, which is released during the mining of copper, gold and other minerals. Roughly 70% of the world's arsenic is found in China – and it is increasingly coming to the surface with horrendous consequences.

"When pollution spills cause massive die-offs of fish, the media usually blames cadmium, but that's wrong. Arsenic is responsible. This is the most dangerous chemical," he said. The country's 280,000 mines are most responsible, according to Chen.

But the land – and food chain – are also threatened by lead and heavy metals from factories and overuse of pesticides and fertilisers by farmers. The risks are only slowly becoming well known. The Economic Information Daily reported this week that pollution ruins almost 12bn kilograms of food production each year, causing economic losses of 20 billion yuan.

Cleaning up China's contaminated farmland is going to be no simple matter because most of the toxins and heavy metals arrive in airborne form.

For Liberals, the Way Forward is the Way Back

If the Liberals are ever coming back, and that's a lot more iffy than many of them want to admit, it will be under a leader determined to reverse the party's corrosive slide to the right.   That would mean a leader willing to take up the cause of malignant inequality - of wealth, of income, of opportunity - and climate change in all its aspects.

Harper's Cons have gone hard right with the NDP in trail to the centre.  If the Libs insist on remaining centre-right they will, and rightly should, be consigned to political irrelevance to await some distant reincarnation.

Why should the Libs veer left right now?   Because that's where Canada needs to shift to face the conditions that will confront us, and the rest of the world, as this century unfolds beginning within just a decade or two.   And to meet those challenges we'll need a healthy, cohesive society of the very sort that Harper is now working hard to undermine.   And an essential (as in sine qua non essential)  key to rehabilitating our society lies in reversing inequality.

One of those annoying economists who just keep getting it right, Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz, has made the case for fighting inequality in his new book, "The Price of Inequality."

"...we have a world in which there are huge unmet needs—investments to bring the poor out of poverty, to promote development in less developed countries in Africa and other continents around the world, to retrofit the global economy to face the challenges of global warming. At the same time, we have vast underutilized resources—workers and machines that are idle or are not producing up to their potential. Unemployment—the inability of the market to generate jobs for so many citizens—is the worst failure of the market, the greatest source of inefficiency, and a major cause of inequality.

As of March 2012, some 24 million Americans who would have liked a full-time job couldn’t get one.

In the United States, we are throwing millions out of their homes. We have empty homes and homeless people.

...This book is about why our economic system is failing for most Americans, why inequality is growing to the extent it is, and what the consequences are. The underlying thesis is that we are paying a high price for our inequality—an economic system that is less stable and less efficient, with less growth, and a democracy that has been put into peril. But even more is at stake: as our economic system is seen to fail for most citizens, and as our political system seems to be captured by moneyed interests, confidence in our democracy and in our market economy will erode along with our global influence. As the reality sinks in that we are no longer a country of opportunity and that even our long-vaunted rule of law and system of justice have been compromised, even our sense of national identity may be put into jeopardy.

...Markets, by themselves, even when they are stable, often lead to high levels of inequality, outcomes that are widely viewed as unfair. Recent research in economics and psychology has shown the importance that individuals attach to fairness. More than anything else, a sense that the economic and political systems were unfair is what motivates the protests around the world. In Tunisia and Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, it wasn’t merely that jobs were hard to come by but that those jobs that were available went to those with connections.

In the United States and Europe, things seemed more fair, but only superficially so. Those who graduated from the best schools with the best grades had a better chance at the good jobs. But the system was stacked because wealthy parents sent their children to the best kindergartens, grade schools, and high schools, and those students had a far better chance of getting into the elite universities.

...One aspect of fairness that is deeply ingrained in American values is opportunity. America has always thought of itself as a land of equal opportunity. Horatio Alger stories, of individuals who made it from the bottom to the top, are part of American folklore. But, increasingly, the American dream that saw the country as a land of opportunity began to seem just that: a dream, a myth reinforced by anecdotes and stories, but not supported by the data. The chances of an American citizen making his way from the bottom to the top are less than those of citizens in other advanced industrial countries.

There is a corresponding myth—rags to riches in three generations—suggesting that those at the top have to work hard to stay there; if they don’t, they (or their descendants) quickly move down. But this too is largely a myth, for the children of those at the top will, more likely than not, remain there.

...For years there was a deal between the top and the rest of our society that went something like this: we will provide you jobs and prosperity, and you will let us walk away with the bonuses. You all get a share, even if we get a bigger share. But now that tacit agreement between the rich and the rest, which was always fragile, has come apart. Those in the 1 percent are walking off with the riches, but in doing so they have provided nothing but anxiety and insecurity to the 99 percent. The majority of Americans have simply not been benefiting from the country’s growth.

...If markets had actually delivered on the promises of improving the standards of living of most citizens, then all of the sins of corporations, all the seeming social injustices, the insults to our environment, the exploitation of the poor, might have been forgiven. But to the young indignados and protestorsmost important of all, the degradation of values to the point where everything is acceptable and no one is accountable.


...Americans, Europeans and people in other democracies around the world take great pride in their democratic institutions. But the protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. The politicians have to listen to the voices of the citizens. But increasingly, and especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to “one dollar one vote” than to “one person one vote.” Rather than correcting the market’s failures, the political system was reinforcing them.

Politicians give speeches about what is happening to our values and our society, but then they appoint to high office the CEOs and other corporate officials who were at the helm in the financial sector as the system was failing so badly. We shouldn’t have expected the architects of the system that has not been working to rebuild the system to make it work, and especially work for most citizens—and they didn’t.

The failures in politics and economics are related, and they reinforce each other. A political system that amplifies the voice of the wealthy provides ample opportunity for laws and regulations—and the administration of them—to be designed in ways that not only fail to protect the ordinary citizens against the wealthy but also further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the rest of society.

...Given a political system that is so sensitive to moneyed interests, growing economic inequality leads to a growing imbalance of political power, a vicious nexus between politics and economics. And the two together shape, and are shaped by, societal forces—social mores and institutions—that help reinforce this growing inequality.

 ...It is often argued on the right that we could have more equality, but only at the steep price of slower growth and lower GDP. The reality (as I will show) is just the opposite: we have a system that has been working overtime to move money from the bottom and middle to the top, but the system is so inefficient that the gains to the top are far less than the losses to the middle and bottom. We are, in fact, paying a high price for our growing and outsize inequality: not only slower growth and lower GDP but even more instability. 

And this is not to say anything about the other prices we are paying: a weakened democracy, a diminished sense of fairness and justice, and even, as I have suggested, a questioning of our sense of identity."

The Liberal Party's shift to the centre-right was an act of contempt toward the Canadian people.   To me this was made plain when Ignatieff convened his "thinkers' conference" at which CEOs and management consultants dominated the speakers' list.  Iggy left the Liberals sitting atop an elitist perch from which they'll have to openly, visibly step down if they're ever to reconnect with the voting public.   The old sops don't work any more.  Daycare and funding for the arts won't meet the looming challenges of the 21st century.

Why Did Lincoln Insist on Keeping These Morons in the Union?

North Carolina recently caused snickers when its state assembly legislated against sea level rise.  Their ordinance stipulated that future sea level rise must be calculated on historic results, not on today's accelerated rates.

Now it's Virginia's turn.

Earlier this year the state of Virginia paid $50,000 for a study on the potential effects of climate change and sea level rise on the state's coastline.

Only one problem: The report's authors weren't allowed to use terms like "climate change" and "sea level rise" because state lawmakers feared a backlash from the state's Republicans and Tea Partiers.

The Virginian-Pilot reports: 

[Lawmakers] discovered that they could not use the phrases "sea level rise" or "climate change" in requesting the study, in part because of objections from Republican colleagues and also for fear of stirring up conservative activists, some of whom believe such terms are liberal code words.

On its website, for example, the Virginia tea party described the proposed "sea level rise" study this way: "More wasted tax dollars for more ridiculous studies designed to separate us from our money and control all land and water use."

So, what did the report authors have to substitute for "sea level rise"?   Try, "recurrent flooding."

Pentagon Post-Mortem on Iraq & Afghan Wars - We F__ked Up

Afghan Army Soldiers

One way of knowing for sure that America has lost a war is when the Pentagon begins navel-gazing.  That's exactly what the US military is doing now - an autopsy of its dismal performance in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Where did America go wrong and when?   In both wars that was Day One.   American forces went into Iraq and Afghanistan prepared for one outcome, failure.

Ten years of war have given the U.S. military more than its share of frustrations. According to an internal Pentagon study, two of them were as fundamental as they were related: Troops had terrible intelligence about Iraq and Afghanistan, and they told their own stories just as badly.

Those are some preliminary conclusions from an ongoing Pentagon study into the lessons of a decade of combat, authorized by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the multi-tour Iraq veteran and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The study doesn’t single out any sensor or spy platform for criticism. Instead, it finds that U.S. troops didn’t understand the basic realities of society, culture and power structures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and couldn’t explain what they were doing to skeptical populations.

“In operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” the report reads, “a failure to recognize, acknowledge and accurately define the operational environment led to a mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions and goals.”

The report considers that less a strategy failure than an intelligence failure, and it doesn’t point fingers at anyone outside of the military. But the military’s intelligence structure, once in Iraq and Afghanistan, was entirely focused on discovering and locating its enemies, which left it blind to the experiences of the local population, which nourished them.

“A focus on traditional adversary information” limited the U.S. and its allies’ “effectiveness in countering asymmetric threats such as insurgencies and mitigating terrorist and criminal influences,” the study finds.

In Afghanistan, the Americans and our own forces went in prepared to fight a military war, the type we were trained and equipped to fight.   Ours was a war of heavy firepower and numerical superiority.   We always had the Taliban outnumbered and we alone had the jet strike fighters, the attack helicopters, the artillery and tanks, the drones, all the good stuff.   We had the intensely trained professional soldiers.   They relied on sparse numbers of farm boys equipped with Korean-war vintage assault rifles, light machine guns and RPGs.

We arrogantly expected the Talibs to fight our war, to stand up in the field and allow our firepower to mow them down.   They didn't like that idea, not when they knew they could win.   They chose to fight their war, knowing that so long as we didn't defeat them on their terms they would win and we would pack up and leave in failure.

We truly "didn't understand the basic realities of society, culture and power structures," in Afghanistan.   We ignored the proven fact that the sort of government and society we sought to establish in Afghanistan has never been achieved without first overcoming tribalism and warlordism.

Yes, the Americans screwed up.   What else is new?   But Canada's political and military leadership were no better.   We could have and should have stuck with our original commitment under the Martin government, a fixed term mission.   No military or political goals beyond holding Kandahar for a few years until it was turned back over to the Americans.

Stephen Harper and his uniformed minions screwed Canada's soldiers by reframing the mission into a war to defeat the Taliban and save Afghan society for democracy.   Neither objective was ever within our grasp or means.   We simply kept extending the duration of our hopeless mission without ever upping the ante in forces to meet our expanded objectives.

Harper cynically milked the war for all the political capital he could squeeze from the dead and maimed bodies of Canadian soldiers.   The general staff of professional ticket punchers did scarcely any better by their troops.    Their repeated and stupid proclamations of having the Talibs on the run stand as testament to their incompetence.   They didn't even understand they were wasting Canadian lives fighting the wrong war, the one that didn't matter.

Will Canada have its own post-mortem on our first failed foreign war?   Probably not any time soon.  That will have to wait until the incompetents who so richly deserve condemnation are flushed out of our political and military leadership and into the safety of retirement.

Is This a Game Changer for America in South Asia?

The latest American air strike blunder in Afghanistan could mark a major shift in US military operations in south Asia.   The bombing, against a home the military believed was housing a Taliban militant, wound up killing 18-civilians, mainly women, children and elderly Afghans.

Western commanders had agreed to no airstrikes without prior Afghan approval yet in the most recent case they went ahead unilaterally.

Now Karzai says there'll be a new policy - no airstrikes on residential targets, period.

This new edict, if it's actually accepted by western forces, gives the Talibs a significant tactical advantage and increases the strain on Afghan security forces.   But the greatest repercussion may lie across the border, in Pakistan.

How will the Americans justify already unauthorized drone strikes on residential targets within Pakistan when those same type of targets are "off limits" in Afghanistan itself?  Obama is already acting in defiance of Islamabad by waging drone war in Pakistan.  Karzai's gambit will presumably ramp up the pressure on Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to stand up to Washington as never before.  And, with China and Russia now openly courting Pakistan, this could open an opportunity for them to push American back in that region.

Cooking the Carbon Books

Maybe it's time to put a cork in China's hydrocarbon pipelines.  A study published in Nature reveals that irregularities in China's energy consumption data suggest total carbon emissions from the People's Republic could be as much as 20% greater than stated.   That would be the equivalent of the CO2 emissions of Japan, itself one of the top five carbon emitters.


The team of scientists from China, Britain and the US, led by Dabo Guan of the University of Leeds, studied two sets of energy data from China's National Bureau of Statistics. One set presented energy use for the nation, the other for its provinces.

They compiled the carbon dioxide emission inventories for China and its 30 provinces for the period 1997-2010 and found a big difference between the two datasets.

"The paper identifies a 1.4-billion tonne emission gap (in 2010) between the two datasets. This implies greater uncertainties than ever in Chinese energy statistics," said Guan, a senior lecturer at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University.

That is slightly more than the annual emissions of Japan, one of the world's top-five greenhouse gas polluters.

Guan said China is not the only country with inconsistent energy data.

Scientists say the world is already racing towards a warming of 2 degrees Celsius or more in coming decades because of the rapid growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Adding another billion tonnes into computer models would accelerate the pace of expected warming.

According to Chinese national statistics, on average, CO2 emissions have been growing 7.5% annually from 1997 to 7.69 billion tonnes in 2010, the authors say in the study.

In contrast, aggregated emissions of all Chinese provinces have increased 8.5% on average to 9.08 billion tonnes in 2010.

By comparison, US emissions were 6.87 billion tonnes in 2010, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

If China's true emissions numbers are blowing the planet straight through the 2C safety margin, why on Earth are we in such a damned rush to sell them massive stocks of the filthiest fossil fuel on the planet, Alberta bitumen?   Why are we so intent on degrading western Canada to help China degrade the world?

Now Do You Get It, Alberta?

A measly 3,000 barrels.   Conventional crude oil at that.  Yet such a minuscule oil spill has central Albertans in a fury.  It turns out they don't like their water contaminated.   That seems to offend them.

Hmm.   Are these the same Albertans who don't mind imperilling British Columbia's pristine coastal waters with truly massive spills of really toxic bitumen contamination, you know the stuff that sinks to the bottom and cannot be cleaned up?

Maybe, just maybe, the Red Deer River spill will finally get the people of Alberta to stand up and demand that their provincial and federal governments not do something incaculably worse with the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan toxic sludge pipelines and their associated supertanker operations.

Maybe, maybe not.

But this is, after all, Alberta and if there's one place you can be sure the oil companies won't mess people up it's Alberta, right?   Ask rancher Dennis Overguard.

The Venus Movies

From NASA, here's a montage of the planet Venus transiting the Sun earlier this week.
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The surface of the sun is recorded in a variety of wavelengths from visible light to ultra-violet and extreme ultra-violet.   And, by the way, this is where you go when you die if you vote Conservative.

Calling the Prince of Darkness, Calling Beelzebub

The Insurance Bureau of Canada has an unwelcome message for Steve Harper - global warming is real and it's going to cost Canada big time.

Telling the Weather Story, a report released this week by the Bureau, predicts climate change will drive a 50% or greater increase in wild fires in British Columbia by 2050.

The study predicts B.C. can expect an increase in wildfires over the average of nearly 2,000 blazes a year between 2000 and 2010. Furthermore, the province will likely see a host of other weather-related issues like warmer temperatures, declining — and, in some regions, disappearing — mountain snowpacks, more intense rainfall during the winter, and drier summers. The number of wildfires sparked by lightning strikes — responsible for nearly 60 per cent of fires — is also expected to rise.

“It’s not a just a possibility,” said Dr. Gordon McBean, the report’s lead researcher. “There’s a very real probability it will happen.”

McBean, a climatologist and professor at the University of Western Ontario, conducted the research with cooperation from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, where he also serves as policy chairman.

The full report can be found here.

Steve Harper's Taxpayer-Funded Enemies List

Last evening I wrote of a state security operation on behalf of the Tar Sanders that has been launched by Stephen Harper.  It is a supposed counter-terrorism organization staffed by the RCMP, CSIS, the Calgary and Edmonton cops and the border patrol agency to "defend" the tar sands operations, the proposed bitumen pipelines and of course the supertanker operations that endanger the British Columbia coast.

But for the fact that I decided to glance through the business section of the Victoria Times-Colonist last evening I would have never known of this.   In my view this should have been on every front page, a lead item on every newscast.

Perhaps we need to take this seriously. There are facets of this that are troubling. There is the state security force running covert ops against Canadians in conjunction with our national spy agency... all in anticipation of possible future events.

I don't know about you but I've learned not to trust the RCMP even when they act overtly. When four of them put an innocent man to death in front of bystanders and then lie their asses off about it, why would anyone trust them when they operate covertly? And CSIS has shown no respect for democratic or human rights. Yet these two agencies are to be covertly set upon the Canadian public?

The RCMP has been significantly corrupted by Harper beginning with the defeat of Paul Martin in which Commissioner Zaccardelli interceded with the announcement of an investigation into Ralph Goodale that, after the election was skewed, proved to be without any substance. So shameless were his actions that "Zac" later refused to answer any questions about what he did and why.  The top cop refused to account for his actions. Then Harper appointed a professional Tory fixer and bureaucrat to be an ersatz Commissioner. More recently he had the latest top stooge become a political water carrier to write to provincial firearms officers over a law that had already been rescinded in case provinces might choose to act in that constitutional void. Add all that up and you have enough reason to suspect the RCMP leadership has transformed the national police force into a partisan political security apparatus.

It speaks volumes that Harper has created this agency and set them to work when there has been no cause. Wiebo Ludwig was an isolated situation involving sour gas and he's dead. What this secret state security, STASI-like operation focuses on is prying into law abiding dissidents who have done no wrong whatsoever.

You can safely assume that particularly vocal opponents of the Tar Sands, the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines and the supertanker traffic that will endanger the B.C. coast north to south, will be going on their lists, will be kept under state surveillance. Dossiers will be opened, updated, reviewed, collated and carefully filed.  After all, environmentalism is now deemed a precursor to terrorism.  And you can be very sure that information will be shared with Big Oil and, through the PMO, the Conservative Party. It's a great trick to use tax dollars to construct political enemies lists. It's low, even despicable, but that's of no moment to a reprobate like Stephen Harper or those who do his unprincipled bidding.


Update - Maybe I'll be on one of those lists soon.   This post has already been read by people from the House of Commons and Government Services and an earlier post pondering how close are we to irreversible climate change has been visited by the RCMP.

Are You A Terrorist? To Harper, the RCMP and CSIS, You Might Well Be.

You might be to Stephen Harper's twisted mind, at least if you're opposed to the Athabasca Tar Sands and the associated pipelines and supertanker traffic that threaten northern and coastal British Columbia not to mention the City of Vancouver.

Just what is terrorism?  According to Wiki,  "The United States Department of Defense defines terrorism as 'the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.'”

Only, in Steve's dark mind, you can substitute "oil patch" for "governments or societies."

Steve has decided to set up a domestic, counter-terrorism unit to protect Alberta's energy industry - not the government, not our society, but the oil industry.   Not against al Qaeda or any of the brand-named terrorist outfits but against opponents of the Tar Sands.

The integrated national security enforcement team will be led by the RCMP and include officers from CSIS, the Edmonton and Calgary police forces and federal border patrol.

Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud said the key to effectively guarding the labyrinth of oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and refineries in Alberta will be to gather intelligence to prevent attacks before they happen.

"When we look at the booming economy of the province of Alberta over the years, one would be led to believe that there is an increased threat to the infrastructure," Michaud said Wednesday.

"We are basically looking at any individuals or groups that pose a threat to critical infrastructure, to our economy, to our safety that is based on either religious, political or ideological goals."

Let's parse that last line.   "Looking at" - how?   Just what sort of intelligence-gathering machine is in the works?   Who'll watch the watchers?   We have a rich history of abuse in this sort of venture in Canada.  CSIS, really?   That pack of bloody buffoons, the RCMP?  "That pose a threat" - what sort of threat - real, probable, potential, totally imagined, deliberately made up?  Who construes just what is a threat?   Even totally legal, democratic dissent could be deemed to pose a "threat" to the Tar Sands.   Where is the threshhold?

This is "police state" shit and coming from an authoritarian thug like Harper to be implemented by dubious outfits like CSIS and the RCMP, the last thing these characters deserve is the benefit of the doubt.

 

Has Vlad Putin Ever Been to Quebec?

Russian president Jean Vladimir Charest Putin has human rights activists up in arms over a new law cracking down on peaceful protest.

This week, the Russian parliament approved a controversial bill which will significantly restrict the right to demonstrate. Under the new law, individuals who take part in unauthorized protests could face maximum penalties of 300,000 rubles (€7,400 or $9,300) or 200 hours of community service, while organizations could face fines of up to 1 million rubles. The fines are a massive increase over the previous penalties.

Putin is expected to sign the bill into law by next Tuesday, a public holiday when the opposition plans to hold a major demonstration in Moscow. Critics accused United Russia of curtailing freedoms. One Communist Party politician told the Associated Press that the law would "destroy the social peace and deepen the divide in the society."

The law may have an unintended effect, though. Some observers predicted that it will actually encourage more people to take to the streets, outraged at the attack on their rights.

Oh, thank goodness, we live in Canada where authoritarianism like Putin's would never be tolerated.

Just How Close Are We to the Edge?

A paper came out in the journal Nature yesterday that contends we have reached the point of imminent environmental collapse.   Those of us who don't have a couple of hundred bucks to blow on a Nature subscription can still find plenty of reviews of the paper.

Let's start with this one from Simon Fraser University:

Using scientific theories, toy ecosystem modeling and paleontological evidence as a crystal ball, 21 scientists, including one from Simon Fraser University, predict we’re on a much worse collision course with Mother Nature than currently thought.

In Approaching a state-shift in Earth’s biosphere, a paper just published in Nature, the authors, whose expertise span a multitude of disciplines, suggest our planet’s ecosystems are careering towards an imminent, irreversible collapse.

Earth’s accelerating loss of biodiversity, its climates’ increasingly extreme fluctuations, its ecosystems’ growing connectedness and its radically changing total energy budget are precursors to reaching a planetary state threshold or tipping point.

Once that happens, which the authors predict could be reached this century, the planet’s ecosystems, as we know them, could irreversibly collapse in the proverbial blink of an eye.

“The last tipping point in Earth’s history occurred about 12,000 years ago when the planet went from being in the age of glaciers, which previously lasted 100,000 years, to being in its current interglacial state. Once that tipping point was reached, the most extreme biological changes leading to our current state occurred within only 1,000 years. That’s like going from a baby to an adult state in less than a year,” explains Arne Mooers. “Importantly, the planet is changing even faster now.”

The SFU professor of biodiversity is one of this paper’s authors. He stresses, “The odds are very high that the next global state change will be extremely disruptive to our civilizations. Remember, we went from being hunter-gathers to being moon-walkers during one of the most stable and benign periods in all of Earth’s history.

“Once a threshold-induced planetary state shift occurs, there’s no going back. So, if a system switches to a new state because you’ve added lots of energy, even if you take out the new energy, it won’t revert back to the old system. The planet doesn’t have any memory of the old state.”

Wired's Brandon Kiem adds this:

In the last few decades, scientists have found tipping behaviors in various natural environments, from locale-scale ponds and coral reefs to regional systems like the Sahara desert, which until 5,500 years ago was a fertile grassland, and perhaps even the Amazon basin.

Common to these examples is a type of transformation not described in traditional ideas of nature as existing in a static balance, with change occurring gradually. Instead, the systems seem to be dynamic, ebbing and flowing within a range of biological parameters.

Stress those parameters — with fast-rising temperatures, say, or a burst of nutrients — and systems are capable of sudden, feedback loop-fueled reconfiguration.

...Human activity now dominates 43 percent of Earth’s land surface and affects twice that area. One-third of all available fresh water is diverted to human use. A full 20 percent of Earth’s net terrestrial primary production, the sheer volume of life produced on land every year, is harvested for human purposes. Extinction rates compare to those recorded during the demise of dinosaurs and average temperatures will likely be higher in 2070 than at any point in human evolution.

Scientists informally call our current geological age the “Anthropocene,” and to Barnosky’s group this means we’re strong enough to tip the planet, radically changing regional climates and ecologies.

“Everything that happened the last time around is happening now, only more of it,” said Barnosky of the last ice age’s end and ongoing changes to Earth’s climate and biosphere. “I think the evidence makes it pretty clear that another critical transition or tipping point is very plausible within the next century.”

And this from the University of Helsinki:

Humanity uses 20 to 40 percent of the planet's basic production. Almost half of the planet's land area is taken up by agriculture or covered by buildings. A considerable part of what remains is pervaded by road networks. Consumption on this scale necessarily has a strong impact on the entire biosphere. Anthony D. Barnosky says:

—We may be seeing a radical change in all of the Earth’s ecosystems in the foreseeable future — even in places where people do not live.

The survey concludes that a state shift will likely occur in a few decades or in a hundred years at the latest. At an estimate, on 10 to 48 percent of the planet's surface, the current climate will disappear and be replaced with something that the current species have not encountered during their existence.

If we are to be able to anticipate changes and prepare for them, methods of predicting them will need to be improved considerably. The researchers propose ways to improve predicting and monitoring the state of the biosphere.

The central aims listed by the survey include curbing population growth and use of the planet's resources, and a swift move away from fossil sources of energy.

How Do You Compete Against a Computer Game?

That's the dilemma faced by South Korea's Defence Aquisition Program Administration (DAPA).

DAPA is trying to hold a competition for new jet fighters for South Korea's air force.  There are three competitors on the short list, two of which have actually shown up, ready for hands-on evaluation - the F-15SE and the Eurofighter.   The third one, you guessed it, is the F-35.

On-site performance tests will be held in June for the F-35, in August for the F-15 SE and in September for the Eurofighter, according to officials at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), South Korea's state arms procurement agency, on Thursday.

While Boeing and EADS agreed to carry out performance tests through actual flights with a Korean pilot on board, Lockheed refused to do so, saying the radar-evading warplane is not in service and still under development.

The flight-test schedule of the single-seat F-35 has been delayed, raising concerns over rising costs and that the aircraft may not be available until 2020.
"Because the F-35 is now under development, only F-35 pilots can fly it," a DAPA official said.

Instead, the DAPA asked Lockheed to conduct performance tests with simulators and a Korean pilot on board a different fighter jet and tracking the F-35, the official said.

A Climate Change Noah's Ark

Consider it something like a bomb shelter for species endangered by global warming.   The Nature Conservancy is cataloguing regions best suited to accommodate plant and animal species that might otherwise be rendered extinct by climate change.

The report, Resilient Sites for Terrestrial Conservation, (linked here) identifies large tracts of the North American northeast that appear suitable as a refuge for endangered species.

The idea of a terrestrial ark is controversial.   Introduced species almost invariably disrupt existing ecosystems and frequently lead to extinction of native species either through predation or inability to compete for resources and habitat.

Whether society, itself burdened by the impacts of climate change, will have the means or inclination to undertake the control and management of introduced species in such a centuries-long venture seems hard to imagine.

An article from Reuters asks "Can Occupy Wall Street Survive?"

"More than eight months after Occupy Wall Street burst onto the global stage, decrying income inequality and coining the phrase "We are the 99 percent," the movement's survival and continued relevance is far from assured. Donations to the flagship New York chapter have slowed to a trickle. Polls show that public support is rapidly waning. Media attention has dropped precipitously.

"...Even its social media popularity, a key indicator of the strength of a youthful movement, has fizzled since its zenith last fall."

It could be that the Occupy movement is in trouble or its decline could be more apparent than real, a manifestation of the movement's inherently loose organization.

Perhaps the question should be whether any of the factors that fueled the Occupy movement initially have been resolved or become somehow irrelevant, less vexing?   Was the movement little more than a frivolous outburst of dissent, discord, dissatisfaction?

What is commonly thought to have fueled Occupy - inequality in wealth, income and opportunity - marked by the rapidly growing gap in economic and political power between the public and a very small group of oligarchs certainly continues to worsen.   Western society is becoming more fractured along both wealth and generational lines.   Is it realistic for that to simply go away?

The greater concern might be if not Occupy, then what?   Occupy has been a great vehicle or outlet for expression of dissent.   It has empowered a force demanding reform.   Yet it has been overwhelmingly peaceful and incredibly patient.

If Occupy fails, that growing discontent and frustration will only build until something else comes along to harness it to different means and purposes.   And that could be ugly.

The Jewel in the Crown - India

India has nothing but friends these days, that is if you leave out Pakistan.   Russia's her friend, has been for generations.   China wants to be India's BFF.   And America is also courting India's affections.

US Def-SEc Panetta was in New Delhi, laden with roses and chocolates, to proclaim India the "linchpin" in America's new strategy for Asia.

Panetta swept away America's historic distrust of India during the Cold War when America chose to shop weaponry to Pakistan, saying, "Our two nations I believe have finally and irreversibly started a new chapter of our history".

"Security ties with India have steadily improved but US officials have yet to realize the goal of a game-changing partnership that could check China's role, analysts say.

"India favours improving military ties and buying weapons from the United States but does not want to become a full-fledged American ally, preferring a degree of breathing space, analysts say.

"Panetta's visit has focused in part on the planned withdrawal of US-led forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, with India concerned about a dangerous vacuum after foreign troops exit.

"The United States favoured a more active role for India in Afghanistan, Panetta said in his speech."

China is currently trying to induct India into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an Asian counterpart to NATO.   India is also still pursuing military joint ventures with Russia and has recently rejected American offers, including the F-35.

Panetta might have been on the money when he called India the "linchpin" of America's military policy in Asia.   A linchpin is what keeps a wagon wheel from falling off the axle.  It's indispensible.  America knows India is indispensible to its pan-Asian strategy.   India knows it.   So do China and Russia.   Let the games begin.

Yet the measure of America's ability to re-invent itself in south Asia may be decided in Islamabad, not New Delhi.   There Panetta, fresh from serenading India, is scolding Pakistan, warning that Washington is reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistan's refusal to crush insurgent strongholds that threaten Afghanistan.   Panetta keeps trying to drive a square peg into a round hole, insisting that all of south Asia fall in line with Washington's bi-polar Asian policy.

Panetta needs India if the U.S. is to have any hope of containing China for very long yet, in the process, he's giving Pakistan powerful incentives to back the insurgents and handing China its own vehicle to contain India and push back against American expansionism.  

America's Asian policy is collapsing under the weight of its own incoherence and its rivals are waiting to pick up the pieces.

Defence of the Realm

DefMin Pete MacKay is gung-ho for Canada to join America's "pivot" to the Far East, a.k.a. the contaiment of China mission or, as I like to call it, Cold War II.   Part of that requires the foreign basing rights MacKay is seeking to negotiate with Singapore and, of course, a handful of dandy, possibly somewhat stealthy, light bombers, the F-35.   That's great but what about us, what about Canada?

The Harper regime may call its defence policy, "Canada First", but that seems, true to form, pretty misleading.

Canada once again faces a direct military threat.    The opening up of the Arctic due to the steady loss of Arctic sea ice is escalating military tensions in the far north.

"A buildup of military forces around the Arctic amid growing excitement about its oil wealth has the ability to undermine stability in the region, a research paper has warned.

"According to the report – called Climate Change and International Security: the Arctic as a Bellwether – the military buildup is neither advisable nor a sensible peacekeeping measure, as it is increasingly designed for combat rather than policing.

"The paper, published by the US not-for-profit organisation, the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), warns: "Although the pursuit of co-operation is the stated priority, most of the Arctic states have begun to rebuild and modernise their military capabilities in the region. The new military programs have been geared towards combat capabilities that exceed mere constabulary capacity."

"It adds: "States such as Norway and Russia are building new naval units designed to engage in high-intensity conflicts. While this capability may be understood as prudent, the ability of rivals to intimidate or subdue with sophisticated weapons systems could, if collegiality falters, undermine diplomacy and stability in the region."

"The paper, authored by Rob Huebert from the University of Calgary and Heather Exner-Pirot of the University of Saskatchewan among others, said one of the biggest worries about the far north area was the enormous uncertainty of everything from the speed of sea ice melting to the price of commodities that could determine the pace of extraction."

As PostMedia reported yesterday, despite all his militaristic chest thumping,  Harper knows he can't afford to make good his promises.    The money simply isn't there.   Something has to give.   You might think that the costly and generally fruitless effort to serve as America's foreign legion might be something worth cutting especially if it diverts funds, personnel and attention from domestic defence requirements.   Shiny trinkets like the F-35 that are essentially useless in Canada's north should be left on the toy store shelves and we should look for something both cheaper and that can do a better job of securing our homeland.

It's time to really put Canada First.

F-35, A Modest Proposal

Here's a great way to handle Canada's F-35 dilemma.   Let's wait until the aircraft's operational testing and evaluation is completed, see what it is that's actually on offer, and then decide whether it's the best bang for Canada's buck?

That sounds kind of sensible, doesn't it?   But, you see, there's a snag.  The Joint Strike Fighter OT&E deadline has now fallen so far behind, it's currently pegged at October, 2019 and that's if all goes well between now and then.   The OT&E timeline just got bumped back a further three years which speaks volumes of the problems plaguing the F-35.

The U.S. Air Force has identified five major problems with the aircraft and a gaggle of lesser problems.   One of the majors is much too secret to be mentioned, which means there's something seriously wrong with the stealth technology.   Others include speed and agility.  At the upper range of the F-35's speed requirements, basically supersonic flight, the stealth coatings on the tail have been damaged by heating, causing bubbling and separating.   Then there's a problem with high angle of attack flying causing excessive buffeting leading to premature structural failure.   The space-age, cockpit in a helmet has been acting up with input lags and sensitivity to airframe buffeting.   Then there's any number of lesser problems with the F-35's millions upon millions of lines of computer code.

This is all building up to a potentially huge reliability nightmare, something that already plagues the F-35's big brother, the far more effective F-22 Raptor that has turned into something of an unintentional Hangar Queen.

Which also plays straight into another Canadian problem with the F-35, numbers.   We're only going to get 65 of the damned things.  To stretch their service life some of those are going to have to be held in reserve in storage.   And if another big whack of the supposedly operational aircraft are down at any given time with the Stealth Bomber Flu, you'll be making do with a very piddling remnant.   Enough, probably, to play warrior in America's aerial Foreign Legion where a dozen or so will usually do, but that's about it.

Oh, and about that secret stealth technology defect?  It might have something to do with a faulty aperature, or window, in the aircraft.    One way the F-35s designated adversaries (okay, Russia and China) are focusing on to render the wunderjet ineffective is to exploit these windows through which the F-35 receives critical information from other aircraft.   That is believed to be how Iran commandeered a US stealth drone flying over its nuclear installations.   They figured out how to get inside and transmitted their own codes to override US controllers.

The US Senate Armed Services Committee just released a report criticizing Lockheed for an aperture problem and other quality-control defects.

Questions over the quality of production of the F-35 will compound the mounting woes of the $396 billion Pentagon program, which has already been restructured three times in recent years to extend the development phase and slow production.

The committee said it was troubled by the average rate of scrap, rework and repair at Lockheed's Fort Worth, Texas facility from 2009 through the first two months of 2012, but gave no details.

"Inattention to production quality" had led to the discovery of a potentially serious issue with an aperture on the plane that was critical to its electronic warfare capability, the report said. The full extent of the problem was not known, but it underscored the need for the Pentagon and Lockheed to "rigorously manage production quality," it said.

"The committee is ... concerned about production quality and whether it is sufficient to ensure the delivery of JSF aircraft to the U.S. and its allies at an affordable price," the committee said in a report accompanying its fiscal 2013 defense budget bill.

You can't build state of the art, ultra-high tech weaponry with the same quality control Stalin used to build his tanks.

Could Harper Force the Evacuation of Vancouver?

Tanker Navigating the Second Narrows
No Margin for Error

Harper's fetish to deliver petro-sludge to China via British Columbia ports includes Vancouver as well as Kitimat.   If Kinder Morgan gets its way, Vancouver could play supertanker roulette just about once a day.   That probably sounds a bit alarmist to anyone unfamiliar with the Second Narrows passage these ships would have to navigate.   Others know better.

Now there's word from The Tyee, about what a bitumen tanker disaster could mean for the population of Vancouver and it's not good.   Check out the graphic here.

Stinking. Toxic. Explosive. These words could describe the cloud of fumes filling the airshed of the Lower Mainland if there was a tanker spill of diluted bitumen in Vancouver harbour. The public health emergency and potential evacuation of large parts of the city might easily overshadow the more well known consequences of an oil spill as local authorities struggle to move hundreds of thousands of people out of harm's way.

This nightmare scenario for Vancouver residents and local emergency planners has been created by a confluence of global forces, corporate decisions and lack of government oversight that may result in a steep increase in tanker shipments of hazardous cargo through the "greenest city in the world" and regional home to more than two million people.

Companies operating in the oil sands are increasingly shipping unrefined bitumen because it is more profitable for them to refine it elsewhere. This lack of value-added processing, supported by the Harper government, not only limits the long-term employment and economic benefits of bitumen extraction, it also creates enormous public safety hazards downstream.

Bitumen is too thick to pump through a pipeline so it must be diluted with a variety of volatile and toxic chemicals imported from elsewhere around the world. This mixture is called "diluted bitumen" and is more abrasive, corrosive and acidic than conventional crude, and typically must be piped under higher temperatures and pressures -- raising the risk of pipeline failures.

The additional risk is that the toxic solvents used to dilute bitumen can quickly evaporate when released into the environment, increasing public safety risks and complicating clean-up efforts if the heavy bitumen sinks into water.

...Oil sands operators have considered the composition of diluted bitumen blends a trade secret and regulators are often not provided detailed information on the types of chemicals they might have to respond to in the event of a spill and subsequent public health emergency. What information is available is not reassuring. The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for one common variety of diluted bitumen warns:

"High vapour concentrations are irritating to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs; may cause headaches and dizziness; may be anesthetic and may cause other central nervous system effects, including death. Hydrogen sulphide gas may be released. Hydrogen sulphide may cause irritation, breathing failure, coma and death, without necessarily any warning odour being sensed. Avoid breathing vapours or mists."

Expert testimony last year to the U.S. Congress also flagged the possibility of off-gassing bitumen solvents "exploding with catastrophic results." The MSDS sheet from Imperial Oil states "Extremely flammable; material will readily ignite at normal temperatures... may release vapours that form flammable mixtures at or above the flash point."


Yet these Albertacentric, Big Oil pandering Petro-Pols on both sides of the floor of the Commons don't think twice about exposing British Columbia to this virtually inevitable environmental disaster.  What do we have to do to stop this, secede?

George Soros Dissects the Failure of Modern Economic Theory

Billionaire investor and activist George Soros has some interesting views on why the sort of economics that brought us where we are today no longer serves mankind.

Does the West's Swing Right Portend Trouble Ahead?

The West has undergone a powerful rightward shift over the past two decades.   Leftist parties have turned centrist.   Centrist parties have become conservative.   Conservative parties have left the traditional bounds of conservatism to embrace a radical, corporatist authoritarianism.

What good can come of this?

It's safe to say that Ronald Reagan would be unacceptable to today's movement conservative Republicans.   Richard Nixon would today be denounced as a socialist.

We have had the same march to the Right.   The NDP is quietly discarding and burying its socialist roots to transform itself into an electable liberal party.   The Libs have turned Conservative Lite.  The Conservatives, like moulting snakes, have discarded their progressive skins to propel themselves well past the bounds of traditional conservatism and into the realm of secretive authoritarianism.

The radical far right is also on the march in Europe.   A nazi-style movement has gained a political toehold in Greece.  Le Pen's movement played an unseemly role in the last French run-off.   And, with the rise of the far right, anti-semitism is resurgent.

The rise of the radical right in Canada and the U.S. plays out in ways far different but no less troubling.  We're clinging to Pax Americana in ways eerily reminiscent of the Cold War.   This time, however, it's China being cast in the role of the former Soviet Union.   The Free World naval exercise, RimPac2012, is about to get underway and, this year, Canada's military presence will be second only to America's.

Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Victoria will be the first Victoria Class submarine to participate in the exercise. Other Royal Canadian Navy units include HMCS Algonquin, Ottawa, Brandon, Saskatoon and Yellowknife. Two teams from Fleet Diving Unit (Pacific), including a dive team and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Section, are also participating.

More than 150 soldiers from the Canadian Army’s 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry will work with the United States Marine Corps and other coalition units in an exercise to practice the evacuation of non-combatants.

In addition to extensive CC-177 Globemaster and CC-150 Polaris Airlift support, the Royal Canadian Air Force will deploy four CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft; seven CF-188 Hornet fighter jets; a CC-150 Air to Air Refueller; a CC-130HT Air to Air Refueller; and two CH-124 Sea Kings. The Royal Canadian Air Force will further deploy key air expertise to form the nucleus of the RIMPAC Combined Air Operations Centre.

Taken in isolation, RimPac is merely just another of the biennial wargames that date back to 1971.  But that would ignore the context that this year's exercise holds.   The United States now confronts a powerful economic and geopolitical rival with a rapidly growing and modernizing military force subordinate only to America's and Russia's armed forces.

The Bush Doctrine, not expressly rescinded by Obama, reserves to America the right to use military force against any nation or group of nations that threaten to overtake US military or economic supremacy.   If that sounds like real hillbilly stuff, it is, and the hillbillies have all the guns.

America has announced a "pivot" in its global military posture to China's doorstep.   US naval forces in the Atlantic will be reduced by 20% which will be transferred to its Pacific fleet.   US ships will be repositioned via forward basing arrangements with friendly Asian countries.   Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been in Vietnam looking to get a deal to lease America's former naval base at Cam Ranh Bay.

And Canada seems to think we should get in on the act.   DefMin MacKay is negotiating forward basing rights with Singapore, presumably for naval and air force units, especially units that might soon be flying F-35s.

The first Cold War was started quite deliberately in response to Soviet aggression in eastern Europe and a very real threat to western Europe.   Cold War II, it seems, will be far more obscure in purpose but potentially just as dangerous.   And it seems that the powers of the far right are backing us into it.   (By the way, I'm claiming copyright over both "Cold War II" and "CWII".)

I'm left with this awful feeling that there's nobody at the wheel this time.   The ReformaTories have a demonstrated preference for brinksmanship over statesmanship and justly deserve to wear the mantle of failure for our futile adventure in Afghanistan.   Will they plunge Canada headlong into a Far East Cold War (FECW)?  Is there anyone who can steer us safely out of an unnecessarily quagmire that could bleed us for decades?

My greatest fear of CWII is that large-scale conflict could be ingrained as self-fulfilling prophecy.  It's not defensive or responsive so much as it is provacative.   The first Cold War at least achieved a measure of stability but that took time and a degree of confidence-building.   This time our posturing is different, more aggressive, more in our adversary's face.   Why?

Jesus' Numbers Are Holding

 A Gallup poll has found that 46% of Americans believe that the world was created by their god less than 10,000 years ago.   That's 1 point above the statistical average for the past thirty years.  Factor in those who believe their god has guided evolution, 32%, and god emerges as the solid winner.   Only 15% believe evolution occured all on its own.   Among Republicans, 58% believe in hard core creationism.

Which possibly explains why these Texans are delighted that Jesus created a portrait of himself in mold in their shower stall.

Is There Someone, Anyone, In Opposition Who Will Call Out Harper?

Whether it's the demise of the Liberals or inexperience of the NDP, Harper is getting too much of a free ride from the Opposition.

Canada is about to wrap up our first failed foreign war.   We went to war in support of our ally (and senior partner), got caught up in the hype and wound up overstaying our welcome for no good end.  For the sake of our dead and maimed, we should at least have learned a lesson from that fiasco.   Apparently neither Harper & Company nor the Opposition have clued in.

The Opposition still sees the F-35 as a political football all about costs and who knew how much and when.   Talk about a bunch of lazy shits going after low-hanging fruit.   Not one of them has been willing to raise what's really wrong about the F-35.   Sure it's overdue, over-price and under-performing but that's not the greatest problem.  

What's most troubling about the F-35 is how it will shape Canada's military and foreign policy in the coming decades.   Yes, an airplane is going to shape our foreign policy and in potentially very dangerous ways.

The F-35 is an offensive weapon system.   It is a light, marginally-stealthy, intruder bomber.  It is designed to get into hostile airspace and bomb critical tactical targets.   It can't protect Canada or our sovereignty.  There's nothing remotely defensive about it.   As the RAND Corporation already determined it can't outrun, outclimb, out-turn or outfight the current generation of Russian fighters much less the next generation.

What the F-35 does is enable us to sign on to America's new "pivot" to the far East, the containment of China mission.   Why we want to pile on to a military threat to the very same country Harper's tortured mind sees as a great customer for our toxic petro-sludge is curious but that's beside the point.

Canada has already paid far too dearly to play war on behalf of Uncle Sam.   We got our asses handed to us in Afghanistan by a gaggle of farm boys with rusty assault rifles.   America may have the biggest military with the greatest firepower but it consistently fails to deliver victories.   So, why are we signing on to its far East adventure?

Canada has no business sabre-rattling on China's doorstep.   It's about time those shiftless time-wasters on the Opposition benches began shouting that from the rooftops. 

Think the F-35 is Dead? Think Again, Think Singapore.

When it comes to America's looming war in the Pacific, Canada's in.   That much became plain with the announcement that Harper DefMin, "Airshow" MacKay, is seeking to establish a Canadian military post in Singapore.

"This entire concept -- the buzzword is the pivot to the Pacific -- it's a recognition of the regional power dynamics here that do affect us, with China expanding and modernizing their military capabilities," Mr. Mac-Kay said.

To that end, Canada is looking at a cost-effective way of increasing its military footprint in the region, he said.

A military hub in Singapore would be similar to the arrangements it has reached with Kuwait and Jamaica, to give it military footholds in the Middle East and the Caribbean.

And just what geopolitical, military interest does Canada have in the far East?  I suppose we'll know just as soon as Washington sends its next batch of marching orders to Ottawa.   And, as noted here repeatedly, that's what the F-35 is all about, Canada's admission ticket to America's Foreign Legion.

Afghanistan Reset

Our days babysitting Afghanistan's unresolved civil war are drawing to a close.   The big question is "what next"?   What will come of Afghanistan after Western forces leave?   According to Gwynne Dyer, it will probably be something close to what it was before we showed up.

The “Afghan National Army” is not fit for purpose, and the outcome after NATO troops leave will probably be the same whether they all go home this year or stay until 2014. So what is that probable outcome?

Karzai may not fall immediately: the $4 billion a year that NATO is promising to pay for the maintenance of his army will probably preserve the status quo for two or three years. But no more: it is most unlikely that the subsidy will be extended when it comes up for review in 2018.

That’s the way the Vietnam War ended. The last U.S. troops left South Vietnam in 1973, but the regime they left behind survived until Congress cut off the flow of military aid in 1975. It happened exactly the same way when the Russians left Afghanistan in 1989: the regime they had supported lasted three more years, until the flow of funds was cut off after the old Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991.

The same thing will almost certainly happen this time. Even the $4 billion that NATO is now pledging will only pay for an Afghan army two-thirds of its currently planned size. When that external funding ends, the roof will probably fall in on Karzai’s regime.

The Taliban will doubtless keep control of the Pashtun-speaking provinces where they recruit most of their fighters. (For all NATO’s efforts, they never really lost it.) The Afghan National Army will probably disintegrate and be replaced by the separate but allied Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek ethnic militias that held the north of the country before 9/11. They may be able to hold it again.

In other words, the likeliest outcome is a reversion to the pre-9/11 distribution of power in Afghanistan, perhaps with the Taliban in control of Kabul, perhaps not. That’s not a wonderful outcome, but it’s not such a terrible one either.

So what in hell was our Afghanistan war for anyway?    We've squandered enough treasure and the lives of dead and wounded soldiers that we need to ask some hard questions and demand some straight answers.

Let's begin with an examination of Canada's military leadership.   Afghanistan stands as an indictment of their very competence.   It seemed at the time and still does that top leaders, including General Randy "Big Cod" Hillier, got swept up in cowboy militarism, a chance to get Canadian soldiers into a real shooting war with their American big brothers.   Where was the prudence we should demand from our military leadership, particularly when they're consigning our soldiers to the prospect of maiming and death?

On what possible basis did Hillier think he could take over the Kandahar province combat operation with a miniscule force of just 2,500 out of which he could field just 1,000 combat troops?   Why did those numbers remain static even as the number of insurgents grew exponentially from the "few dozen scumbags" Hillier derided at the outset of "the mission"?   Why did a succession of senior officers keep claiming we had them (the Talibs) on the run, whipped, finished?   Why did Hillier & Company not realize what Gwynne Dyer observes, that the war was unwinnable from the outset?

The Western alliance has finally accepted that if the foreign troops cannot defeat the Taliban in 11 years, they are most unlikely to do so in 13 or 15 years.

The Russians could have told them that. “Our soldiers are not to blame,” General Sergei Akhromeyev told the Soviet Politburo in 1986. “They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.”

According to the Pentagon’s own numbers, each American soldier in Afghanistan costs about $1 million a year. Pashtun teenagers, eager to show their worth fighting against the foreigners, can be had for about $200 a month each—and there is an almost inexhaustible supply of young Pashtun males. The war was unwinnable from the start.

Even if our military and political leaders can be somehow excused for not knowing this war was unwinnable at the outset, there is no excuse for not realizing that brutal and blatant truth by 2008 when Parliament voted to extend the mission to 2011.    Lives lost in an unwinnable war are lives squandered to political expedience and military ticket-punching.

Why do we need a thorough, painfully honest post-mortem on Afghanistan?   Because our role as America's Foreign Legion is only beginning and the trust relationship between our political and military leadership needs an overhaul.   We need a reaffirmation of the "Canada First" defence policy and we'll not achieve that by acting as though we're a branch plant operation for Home Office in Washington.

We need to keep a critical eye on the Department of National Defence.   In the United States the Pentagon now vies with the State Department in shaping foreign policy.   Think that couldn't happen here?   All you need do is think F-35.   The F-35 our forces want so desperately is an offensive weapon, a supposedly stealthy light intruder bomber.   The role the Americans have in mind for the F-35 was laid bare in their recent "Operation Chimichanga" exercise.   The F-35 is what you use to attack China and that's it.   As a defensive weapon it's virtually useless with limited range, payload and mediocre agility and speed not to mention very questionable reliability.

We need to accept Afghanistan for what it is, our first failed, foreign war.   We lost, they won, simple as that.   We had all the King's horses and all the King's men and the latest and greatest in artillery, attack helicopters, tanks, jet fighters and drones.    They had a fraction of our strength and fought us to the quitting point using Korean-war vintage assault rifles and RPGs wielded by illiterate farm boys.  We lost and we never really had a hope of winning.

Militarism in the United States is out of control.  If the lives we lost and ruined in Afghanistan are to have any meaning, it should be realizing what can befall nations that get drawn into the new American militarism.

Breaking a Culture of Corruption

Cops are corrupt and they don't even try to hide it.   They're liars and cheats who don't think twice about breaking the public trust and trampling it under their combat boots.

Does this sound extreme, unfair?  It's not.   The recent controversy over the Vancouver Police officer, Lee Chipperfield, who executed Paul Boyd, shooting the man six to eight times before pausing and then delivering the coup d'grace shot into Boyd's head proves the point.

This isn't about the shooter.  The recently released bystander video will take care of Chipperfield.   This is about the other five or six cops who stood beside the shooter, did nothing to prevent him from executing Boyd, and did even less afterward.

What were those cops doing as Boyd was shot to his hands and knees, shot somewhere between six and eight times?   What were they doing during the 20-odd seconds while their comrade waited before firing the fatal shot that entered Boyd's face and blasted its way down to his heart?

Cops are trained.  They're trained in law.   They're trained in the use of force up to and including deadly force.   They're trained observers.

Civilians aren't trained observers which is why judges caution jurors about the unreliability of eyewitness evidence when they testify.   Cops, however, are treated differently because they're professional observers.

So, when Paul Boyd was executed, there were at least six professional observers on the scene who witnessed the killing from a distance of just a few feet.   Why then did we have three, inconclusive inquiries into this killing over the past five years?  Why did it take a tourist's cell-phone video to bring the truth into the open?

This is far bigger than one dead, mentally disturbed man and Constable Lee Chipperfield.   This is about Chipperfield and every other cop who stood beside him that night, did nothing to prevent the execution and, by all indications, covered their own asses and Chipperfield's afterwards.

Cops are supposed to protect the public and that includes members of the public in need of protection from their fellow cops.   When cops allow the public to be executed as they did with Paul Boyd and then fail to come forward with the truth, they step outside the law.   They're not cops any more, they're outlaws, with guns.

We saw it in the killing of Robert Dziekanski.   Four cops, Mounties, who all lied their asses off about how and why this man was put to death at their hands.   In British Columbia, many of us still remember young Ian Bush slaughtered by a bullet fired straight into the back of his head by a cop, another Mountie, who claimed that, at the time, he was pinned flat on the floor, face down, with Bush atop him. (it's a feat, by the way, that no one has ever been able to replicate, including the cop, which makes it, in my view, a damned lie)

This culture of corruption is systemic, institutional, and it goes right to the top.   I'm pretty sure there had to be a "don't ask/don't tell" blanket placed over the other officers who were with Chipperfield that night.   How many of them were compelled to explain, in full detail, what happened not only between Chipperfield and his victim but also between each of them and Chipperfield, each of them and Boyd?   How many of those other officers were called to account for their role in the execution of Paul Boyd for simply by virtue of being there they each had a role in it and everything that followed.

If Harper insists on indulging his prison fetish, he should fill the first one with cops like these.  At a crime scene, no cop is a bystander and every one must account for his actions.