Cyprus, the European Union's Dilemma

Cyprus, it seems, is the Cayman Islands of the Mediterranean.  Russian oligarchs are said to use it to launder their money.   And, for the European Union, the Cypriot-Russian connection complicates efforts to bail out the financially-stricken island.  Der Spiegel reports that German intelligence has warned that bailing out troubled Cypriot banks may effectively amount to bailing out Russia's oligarchs and their under the table money.

Last Friday, the sun was shining in this paradise for Russians. The sky was a deep blue and the palms along the beach promenade swayed in a light breeze as the the temperature climbed to 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) before noon. No doubt Limassol offered a welcome relief from the cold and wet autumn weather of Moscow. Russians appreciate this spot on the southern coast of Cyprus.

The boutiques sell sable coats even in summer, the restaurants serve salted herring and vodka, apartments near the pier cost upwards of €300,000 ($383,000) and there's no shortage of luxurious villas priced at millions of euros.

The city park has a bust of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, there's a Russian radio station, Russian newspapers, a Russian Orthodox church, private schools offering Russian diplomas and signposts in Cyrillic writing. The mayor of Limassol himself speaks fluent Russian and studied in Moscow during the Soviet era.

[Now these wealthy Russians] are at risk of losing their paradise because Cyprus is virtually bankrupt. The island's economy has been dragged down by the recession ravaging Greece, with which it has close business ties. In addition, Cypriot banks bought billions of euros in Greek government bonds that are practically worthless now. The banks have already had to write off large portions of their investments, and are in trouble as a result.

...Now the euro countries, and especially Germany, will have to step in with a €10 billion aid injection to prop up the island's banks. That will confront German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and their European colleagues with a major dilemma because a secret report written by the German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), outlines who would be the main beneficiaries of the billions of euros of European taxpayers' money: Russian oligarchs, businessmen and mafiosi who have invested their illegal money in Cyprus.

The Russians don't just love Cyprus for its great climate. The shell companies here are conveniently anonymous, the banks discreet and the taxes are low. Dirty money bestowed a lasting boom on Cyprus and the inhabitants of "Limmasolgrad" are still doing well.

So there is the European Union's conundrum.   Cyprus has, in some respects, become a sort of criminal enterprise yet the E.U. may still have to step in to prop it up.  Yikes.

When I Realized David Petraeus Was a Wanker

The former wunderkind of the U.S. Army first came to my notice when he unveiled the American military's new counterinsurgency field manual, FM3-24.   Petraeus had commanded a team of the best and brightest military and civilian minds to digest the lessons of two thousand years of counterinsurgency warfare and write a manual of "do's and don'ts" for American commanders already facing tough sledding in the Muslim world.

It wasn't surprising that Petraeus would catapult from that assignment to become commander of coalition forces in Iraq.  In a clumsy bit of sleight of hand good enough for the rubes at home, Petraeus instituted a "surge" of forces in Iraq that coincided with a sharp drop in sectarian violence.   The decline in violence actually marked the conclusion of Shiite ethnic cleansing of mixed neighbourhoods in Baghdad.   The Shiites simply ran out of Sunnis they needed to evict.   And the Sunnis themselves sought American protection and cash which motivated them to turn on al Qaeda personnel in their midst.

Then when Obama succeeded Bush II, Petraeus was given the chance to command again, this time in Afghanistan.   Naturally he went for the surge gimmick again and it worked no better than it had in Iraq.

What was most troubling is that Petraeus tossed his own field manual, FM3-24, out the window in Afghanistan.  He didn't implement the lessons he laid down just a few years earlier.  In fact, the Afghan war was so botched up that, in July, 2010, the Pentagon's own think tank, the RAND Corporation,  issued a report declaring the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan irredeemably lost.

It was inescapable to anyone with a clear-headed eye on Iraq and Afghanistan that Petraeus was a first-rate showboater with very powerful connections and enormous popularity with the folks back home.   He was the legitimate heir to Westmoreland, not Patton, but not in the eyes of a fawning nation.

Maybe getting taken down by a bit of skirt was actually a blessing in disguise for David Petraeus.  It might just freeze his legacy as that of a great man brought low.

Confused About the Petraeus Scandal? Here's All You Need to Know.

The NYT's Maureen Dowd sums up the David Petraeus furball scandal in just one paragraph.

His fall started as Sophocles and turned sophomoric, a mind-boggling mélange of “From Here to Eternity,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “The Real Housewives of Centcom,” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” It features toned arms, slinky outfits, a cat fight, titillating e-mails, a military more consumed with sex than violence, a plot with more inconceivable twists than “Homeland,” and a Twitter’s-delight lexicon: an “embedded” mistress named Broadwell, a biography called “All In,” an other-other woman of Middle East ancestry who was a “social liaison” to the military, a shirtless F.B.I. agent crushing on the losing-her-shirt-to-debt Tampa socialite, a pair of generals helping the socialite’s twin sister with a custody case, and lawyers and crisis-management experts linked to Monica Lewinsky, John Edwards and the ABC show “Scandal.”

Please, No More Orca in Toronto

 It's bad enough keeping dolphins and belugas in captivity but it's an outrage to incarcerate orca for no other reason than to flog tickets to gawkers.

Yet, according to TorStar, Marineland owner John Holer is searching for a new orca to share the same fate that awaits his solo whale, Kiska.   Apparently the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums requires that killer whales in captivity have at least one companion.   In other words, Holer needs to keep a pair on Death Watch.  One simply won't do.

Marineland has had 26 killer whales over roughly three decades, according to the animal welfare group, Zoocheck Canada. Of these, 16 died at Marineland. Three are still alive: Kiska and two elsewhere. Six died in other parks after being transferred while one died en route from Marineland to Japan.

Junior, a killer whale born like Kiska near Iceland, spent the last four years of his life indoors in a small concrete pool in a converted factory made of concrete, with little natural light.

Kiska is the last of Holer’s killer whales; her five calves all died.
The file kept by Zoocheck is approximate, according to Julie Woodyer, its campaigns manager. She said trying to find out information about marine mammals in Canada is a “free-for-all” because there are no regulations covering captive animals.

Former trainer Christine Santos told the Star in mid-October that Kiska had been bleeding from her tail off-and-on since July. She said she had seen Kiska cut her dorsal fin on sharp fibre glass drain covers in her pool, but didn’t know how she cut her tail.

Death watch?  In the wild, orca males have a lifespan of about 30-years, females average 50-years.   In captivity, they seem to have lifespans shorter than Death Row inmates awaiting execution.

Of the 197 killer whales in captivity since 1964, almost 2/3 didn’t make it passed 10 years in captivity. Less than 30 orcas survived more than 20 years in captivity. Average time in captivity has improved steadily over the decades, but is still very low.

Blue Versus Red - a War of the Wealthy

The ever widening gap between Red and Blue America exists mainly among the wealthy.

The New York Times reports that a study based on exit polls shows lower-income Americans, whether from Blue or Red states, tend to favour the Democratic Party.  The divide seems to be the battleground of more well-to-do voters.

To picture this, imagine two alternative universes for the 2012 election. In the first, only individuals making less than $50,000 a year can vote; in the second, only those making more than $100,000 a year can. Based on exit polls from Election Day, we have a decent idea of how these scenarios would play out.

In the first universe, Barack Obama wins in a 1984-style landslide, with a near sweep of the Electoral College and around 60 percent of the popular vote.

In the second universe, Mitt Romney wins with a healthy 54 percent of the popular vote. Though he still carries the red states, a landslide remains out of his grasp — wealthy voters in blue states like New York and California still support Obama by comfortable margins.

Remarkably, this same pattern has occurred in every presidential contest over the past twenty years. Lower-income voters consistently support the Democratic candidate in nearly every state. Upper-income voters, on the other hand, are more mixed in their political views: wealthy voters in Mississippi are strongly Republican while wealthy voters in Massachusetts are strongly Democratic. Extensive analyses of survey information from these elections show that this relationship holds even when controlling for age, race, sex and education.

In other words, contrary to what you have heard, there’s only a strong red America-blue America split toward the top of the income distribution. Toward the bottom, the electoral map is a sea of blue.

It still seems hard to grasp that when rich and poor are tabulated together, Obama edged out Romney by just a couple of points.  That suggests an America today of enormous affluence in which lower-income voters make up a small minority.

It's a Start

I couldn't resist borrowing the Ann Coulter line.  A woman in the state that thinks Jan Brewer should be their governor has run down her husband because (a) he didn't vote and (b) Barack Obama won re-election to the White House.


Holly Solomon, 28, was arrested after running over husband Daniel Solomon following a wild chase that left him pinned underneath the vehicle.

Daniel Solomon, 36, was in critical condition at a local hospital, but is expected to survive, Gilbert police spokesman Sergeant Jesse Sanger said.

Police said Daniel Solomon told them his wife became angry over his "lack of voter participation" in last Tuesday's presidential election and believed her family would face hardship as a result of Obama winning another term.

Witnesses reported the argument broke out on Saturday morning in a parking lot and escalated. Mrs Solomon then chased her husband around the lot with the car, yelling at him as he tried to hide behind a light pole, police said. He was struck after attempting to flee to a nearby street.



 

Could General Petraeus Become Inmate Petraeus?

The United States military takes adultery very seriously.  In fact it treats adultery as a criminal offence warranting imprisonment.

When CIA director David Petraeus resigned, he pointedly stated that his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, began after he left the U.S. Army.

Under no circumstances did the affair occur while Petraeus was still an active duty general.   Certainly not during the time Petraeus and Broadwell spent together in Afghanistan.  And not during the time she spent with him working on his biography.  

This isn't over yet, not by a long shot.

It's Curious How Badly We Don't Want to Know

The scientific community is warning anyone willing to listen that Hurricane Sandy was just the opening act for even more extreme weather conditions to come.   So, what are we doing about it?  What is your province doing?   What is our federal government doing?

The storms and flooding are bad enough but it could be the droughts that send our society reeling.   How many more droughts like the one just winding down can we sustain without suffering widespread and substantial impacts?   Australia's wheat belt is expected to be hit by drought this year.   America's drought may rebound this summer.    The same is expected in Russia.

What lies in store for Canada?   With Harper actively suppressing Canadian scientists, how will we get the information we need to meet the future?   Harper has chosen between the safety and welfare of the country and our people and the interests of the oil patch and we the people came out on the losing end.

Then again, we're not pushing back very hard either.   Harper knows we're letting him get away with his chicanery.   There may be pockets of resistance, such as here in coastal B.C., but by and large the country is asleep in the backseat, content to leave Harper at the wheel.

New Jersey's Dilemma

New Jersey seaside property owners face a dilemma - to rebuild or simply walk away.   Faced with increasing sea level rise and predictions of more, potentially destructive storms in the near future, the vaunted Jersey Shore may have turned into a bad bet.

U.S. Geological Survey scientist Jeffress Willliams says that rising sea levels and changing weather patterns make it likely that the coast will be hit by more frequent destructive storms.

He and other shoreline advocates say officials should consider restricting development to reduce the harm storms can do. They suggest relocating homes and businesses farther from the ocean, building more seawalls and keeping sand dunes high.

 

The Great One's Low Rent Progeny

Wayne Gretzky should have stayed on the ice instead of fathering this, his now notorious party-girl daughter, Paulina.   Here's Miss Gretzky posing with an Obama puppet on election night.  She posted the photo with the caption, "Yeah, I went there."  Perhaps after drying out she removed the photo from her Instagram page.

Why No Honest War Memorials?

I've seen many war memorials.   A good many of them are topped by some heroic-looking lump of bronze depicting a perfect specimen, with immaculate puttees, a jaw fixed in determination, wielding a Lee Enfield with bayonet attached and leaning into an implied fray.

Oddly enough these memorials never, absolutely never show us the maimed, dismembered corpses we're actually there to venerate.  We excise the reality of mayhem to sanitize the slaughter.

Lest We Forget, really? 

Post-Election Racism Tracked

The re-election of Barack Obama triggered a flood of truly ugly, racist tweets.

A group of geography academics calling themselves the "Floating Sheep" scoured Twitter for the racist tweets and tracked them down by state of origin.   Voila.

Yellow states had relatively low levels of racist tweets.  Green states were found to be the source of high levels of racist tweets.

"Alabama and Mississippi have the highest LQ measures: They have scores of 8.1 and 7.4, respectively. And the states surrounding these two core states -- Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee -- also have very high LQ scores and form a fairly distinctive cluster in the southeast."

The article, from Atlantic, gives examples of some of these tweets.  If you feel the need, you can read them there.

Adding Insult to Injury - Northern Gateway Style

It seems Harper isn't finished working over British Columbia in preparation for forcing through the Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline-supertanker venture.

He's gutted our fisheries regulations, ditto for our marine ecosystem protections.  He's moved our emergency oil spill centre to Quebec.  He's neutered environmental assessment procedures.  He's closed down Coast Guard stations and shut down entire portions of Fisheries and Oceans, effectively eliminating the monitors and defenders of our coastline.

Now Harper is putting Fisheries & Oceans staff into service with Team Enbridge.

Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project is getting special attention from the federal Fisheries Department, according to an internal email.

In what critics call an unprecedented step, the department has listed a "Northern Gateway Liaison" at a top level of its organizational chart, under a reorganization prompted by the 2012 budget's sweeping Fisheries Act amendments.

The position will report directly to the executive director of the National Ecosystems Management Branch at the department's headquarters.

"This suggests an unprecedented level of access and engagement for a specific project," said Green party leader Elizabeth May, former adviser to a federal environment minister. "This is the reality of a government that has told the bureaucracy, 'be prepared to make sure this project goes through.' "

America's Other Civil War - the One Breaking Out Within the GOP

Do moderate Republicans now wish their party had chosen Santorum or Gingrich instead of Romney to take on Obama?   Some, weighing up their bitterly divided G.O.P. in the wake of the Obama re-election, think that might have been the best thing for the party.

Some believe Romney came close enough to victory to allow an even fight in the coming Republican civil war and thus ensure a protracted and painful debate that will stretch on for years. What the party really needed, some think, was to have nominated a died-in-the-wool ultra-conservative in 2012 such as Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich who could have led the party to an overwhelming defeat, forcing the reformist wing to triumph. But the selection of Romney denied them that piece of creative destruction, even though the party has now lost the popular vote tally in five of the last six presidential elections. "They are still maybe at the early stages of denial," [University of California professor, Shaun] Bowler said.

"They look a lot more like a political party of the 1950s than a party of the 21st century," said Professor David Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Akron in Ohio. "They are at risk of being irrelevant."

Some in the party know it. Even though the corpse of the defeated Romney campaign is still warm, a bitter fight has started to break out over its meaning in Republican ranks. On one side are the modernists, who understand that the party cannot afford to be seen as a backwards-looking ghetto for white voters. On the other are the nativists, angry at a crippled and ineffective immigration system, who believe that only a true message of pure conservatism will save the day. It is a battle for the soul of the Republican party and the first shots are being fired. "I think it is going to be a war. I really do," said Larry Haas, a political commentator and former aide in the Clinton White House.

- If you happened to catch Real Time with Bill Maher last night you would have seen a preview of this as two Republican guests repeatedly went at each other while James Carville, seated between them, chuckled in delight.


The Democrats, in fact, are licking their lips at the prospect of the next four years. Obama's brilliant strategists have created a highly effective coalition of minorities, younger women voters and urban educated people. They eked out an election win in the most trying of economic circumstances by getting those people to the polls.

This might be the moment for Obama to exploit the divisions in the Republican camp by introducing badly needed but moderate, popular initiatives to force moderate Republicans to choose between their country and the radical Right of their own party.  Obama may have a golden opportunity to cut the moderates out of the radical rightwing herd.

BTW - here's a graphic from Atlantic showing the respective demographics of Romney and Obama supporters.

America's Virtual Civil War

 Robert Reich sees an America increasingly divided into two distinct camps steadily withdrawing from each other.

It’s almost a civil war. I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats won’t even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldn’t share with my granddaughter.

...Maybe it’s that we’re more separated now, geographically and online. 

The town where I grew up in the 1950s was a GOP stronghold, but Henry Wallace, FDR’s left-wing vice president, had retired there quite happily. Our political disagreements then and there didn’t get in the way of our friendships. Or even our families — my father voted Republican and my mother was a Democrat. And we all watched Edward R. Murrow deliver the news, and then, later, Walter Cronkite. Both men were the ultimate arbiters of truth.

But now most of us exist in our own political bubbles, left and right. I live in Berkeley, California – a blue city in a blue state – and rarely stumble across anyone who isn’t a liberal Democrat (the biggest battles here are between the moderate left and the far-left). The TV has hundreds of channels so I can pick what I want to watch and who I want to hear. And everything I read online confirms everything I believe, thanks in part to Google’s convenient algorithms.

That geographic split also means more Americans are represented in Congress by people whose political competition comes from primary challengers – right-wing Republicans in red states and districts, left-wing Democrats in blue states and districts. And this drives those who represent us even further apart.

But I think the degree of venom we’re experiencing has deeper roots.

The nation is becoming browner and blacker. Most children born in California are now minorities. In a few years America as a whole will be a majority of minorities. Meanwhile, women have been gaining economic power. Their median wage hasn’t yet caught up with men, but it’s getting close. And with more women getting college degrees than men, their pay will surely exceed male pay in a few years. At the same time, men without college degrees continue to lose economic ground. Adjusted for inflation, their median wage is lower than it was three decades ago.

In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift. That’s made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger – eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other pedlars of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have gained political power by fanning the flames. 

Not even this degree of divisiveness would have taken root had America preserved the social solidarity we had two generations ago. The Great Depression and World War II reminded us we were all in it together. We had to depend on each other in order to survive. That sense of mutual dependence transcended our disagreements. My father, a “Rockefeller” Republican, strongly supported civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid. I remember him saying “we’re all Americans, aren’t we?”

To be sure, we endured 9/11, we’ve gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we suffered the Great Recession. But these did not not bind us as we were bound together in the Great Depression and World War II. The horror of 9/11 did not touch all of us, and the only sacrifice George W. Bush asked was that we kept shopping. Today’s wars are fought by hired guns – young people who are paid to do the work most of the rest of us don’t want our own children to do. And the Great Recession split us rather than connected us; the rich grew richer, the rest of us, poorer and less secure.

So we come to the end of a bitter election feeling as if we’re two nations rather than one. The challenge – not only for our president and representatives in Washington but for all of us – is to rediscover the public good.

Reich is on solid ground in pointing out the fracturing of America into two camps and within each of those camps itself.   Moderate Republicans fear and often bow to the radical Tea Party contingent stoked from the sidelines by the Limbaugh/FOX brigade and the big money forces.  It took the devastation of Hurricane Sandy to breathe life, however briefly, into the bipartisanship of Obama and Christie, Obama and Bloomberg.

Like it or not, the stresses of the 21st century, climate change foremost among them but still just one, will require great societal cohesion if they're to be met.   America's current and widening 50/50 split may be a formula for disaster for the nation state. 

America's Top Scientists Warn America's Top Generals

America's top scientific research group, the National Research Council, has warned that nation's military and intelligence agencies that global warming will be placing new strains on the way they operate around the world.

"The National Research Council, says in a study commissioned by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies that clusters of apparently unrelated events exacerbated by a warming climate will create more frequent but unpredictable crises in water supplies, food markets, energy supply chains and public health systems. 

 “[Hurricane Sandy] is the sort of thing we were talking about,” said Mr. Steinbruner, a longtime authority on national security. “You can debate the specific contribution of global warming to that storm. But we’re saying climate extremes are going to be more frequent, and this was an example of what they could mean. We’re also saying it could get a whole lot worse than that.”

Mr. Steinbruner, the director of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, said that humans are pouring carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases into the atmosphere at a rate never before seen. “We know there will have to be major climatic adjustments — there’s no uncertainty about that — but we just don’t know the details,” he said. “We do know they will be big.” 

...Climate-driven crises could lead to internal instability or international conflict and might force the United States to provide humanitarian assistance or, in some cases, military force to protect vital energy, economic or other interests, the study said. 

 ...states will fail, large populations subjected to famine, flood or disease will migrate across international borders, and national and international agencies will not have the resources to cope.

...Mr. Steinbruner said that as the need for more and better analysis is growing, government resources devoted to them are shrinking. Republicans in Congress objected to the C.I.A.’s creation of a climate change center and tried to deny money for it. The American weather satellite program is losing capability because of years of underfinancing and mismanagement, imperiling the ability to predict and monitor major storms.

That certainly has a familiar tone.   The radical Right, a.k.a. the Harper regime, shutting down resources devoted to monitoring and analysis of global warming.

Petraeus Quits CIA, Confesses to Affair

Former Pentagon wunderkind and current CIA Director David Petraeus has resigned.   In a statement the man once thought a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination admitted to an extra-marital affair.

“After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” Mr. Petraeus wrote. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the president graciously accepted my resignation.”

And Dave is sharing the day with another prominent philanderer, Lockheed-Martin's incoming president and CEO, Christopher Kubasik.   Currently Lockheed's COO, Kubasik resigned over an affair with a subordinate.

Manufacturing Grounds for War with Iran

The United States claims that Iran opened fire on a U.S. Predator drone in "international waters."   Washington seems intent on casting Iran as belligerent.    Examined a little more closely and this comes across as more of an act of provocation by the Americans.

Firstly, what drone?  It was an American drone, one known to be commonly armed.   And we can't overlook the fact that America has also been sending drones into Iranian airspace to spy on its nuclear installations.   That led to the Iranian capture of a Lockheed RQ-170 stealth drone just before last Christmas (which also handed the Russians and Chinese with a bundle of Lockheed's stealth technology secrets).

Second, just where did this happen?   The Americans contend it was in "international waters."   Plainly, an aerial drone isn't in anybody's waters.  It's in the air.   But where in the air?   By America's own account, barely 16-miles off Iran's coast.

What would America make of an Iranian drone, carrying an unknown payload, 16-miles distant from the Statue of Liberty or the Lincoln Memorial?   Does anyone believe Washington wouldn't have that drone shot down into the sea PDQ?

Washington and Israel are constantly rattling their sabres, warning of a possible attack on Iran, and yet they take umbrage when they fly a potentially armed drone right up to Iran's doorstep, almost certainly to probe its defences, and the Iranians fire on it?

This is a scam, plain and simple, and it's about as transparent as the Bush/Cheney march to war with Iraq.   Washington is poking Iran with a sharp stick.   If the Americans run true to course, this won't be the last stunt to goad Iran into doing something they can exploit.

Another Victim of Globalization - Britain's Trees.

British Columbians were, and remain, incensed that trade agreements prevented our government from blocking the export of raw logs.  We wanted the log processing jobs from the sawmills to wood fibre and pulp processing opportunities.   We can't, we were told by Victoria, our hands are tied.

Britons are now being told their country will suffer because of trade deals that left their government's hands tied.   This time the loss won't be jobs but Britain's Ash trees.

The British government claims it was powerless to prevent the importation of diseased Ash trees that spread their infection to the country's native Ash groves.

The government claimed it was powerless to ban imports of infected trees because its "hands were tied" by EU and world trade rules when it was warned in September 2009 that ash dieback disease could have a huge impact on the British countryside, the Guardian has learned.
 ...Burgess wrote that it had become apparent "fairly recently" that the disease – which the commission understood to be caused by Chalara fraxinea – had a form caused by a different fungus called Hymenoscyphus albidus. This, he said, "was widespread across Europe, including here in Britain.

"This fact alone precludes us from initiating an emergency response under the European Union plant health directive and we would also fall foul of our international obligations under the World Trade Organisation," he wrote.

When will we come to our senses and realize that globalization and world trade agreements were shaped to the needs of the world in the late 70's, a world that has sadly been replaced by the much more challenging and dangerous world of the 21st century.   Those agreements have lost much of their utility and purpose.   If you have a chance I strongly urge you to read Stiglitz' discussion of the flaws in globalization in his new book, "The Price of Inequality."  It is a compelling eye-opener and reveals we are heading much too fast down a dead end road.

Great, Wrong Again.. or, Surprise, Sandy Has Sisters!

The U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research reports they, and the larger scientific community, got it wrong.   Once again they erred on the conservative side resulting in unduly optimistic projections.

Now, NCAR warns, we're in for higher than expected temperatures and, with that, more extreme weather sooner than previously forecast.

The analysis by the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that climate model projections showing a greater rise in global temperature were likely to be more accurate than those showing a smaller rise. This means not only a higher level of warming, but also that the resulting problems – including floods, droughts, sea level rise and fiercer storms and other extreme weather – would be correspondingly more severe and would come sooner than expected.

Scientists at the NCAR published their study on Thursday in the leading peer-reviewed journal Science. It is based on an analysis of how well computer models estimating the future climate reproduce the humidity in the tropics and subtropics that has been observed in recent years. They found that the most accurate models were most likely to best reproduce cloud cover, which is a major influence on warming. These models were also those that showed the highest global temperature rises, in future if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase.

Slowly, perhaps much too slowly, our leaders are coming to recognize, publicly, that we are indeed holding a gun to our own heads.   Unfortunately, translating that sort of acknowledgement into the type of action needed to effectively respond, is something that has eluded civilizations in the past.   There is a vast and powerful inertia to be overcome and corporatist governments are particularly ill-suited to challenging the status-quo. 

Oh America's Right Will Have a Field Day With This

Americans will choose their next president in 2016.   That, according to the OECD, will also be the year that China overtakes the United States to become the world's largest economy.

Four more years, four more years, four more years.   We're Number One, no...  We're Number Two, We're Number Two.   Well you get the picture.

To a nation where half the population can be made to believe just about anything, especially about a black guy, the linkage is bound to go down like honey and wine.  

Obama, China.   Obama, China.   Obama, China.   The graphics department at FOX News is probably busy on this already.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said China's economy will be larger than the combined economies of the eurozone countries by the end of this year, and will overtake the US by the end of 2016.

Global GDP will grow by 3% a year over the next 50 years, it says, but there will be large variations between countries and regions. By 2025, it says the combined GDP of China and India will be bigger than that of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US and Canada put together. Asa Johansson, senior economist at the OECD, said: "It is quite a shift in the balance of economic power we are going to see in the future."

So, let's recap.   A major transition in global power will be upon us in 2016.  Symbolic, mainly, to be sure but these things have a way of morphing.   A decade after that the economy of Asia will exceed that of the Western world.

We're all in for some pretty Wal-Mart sized adjustments and that's the sort of thing that can fuel tensions among countries and their peoples.   Yet we're paving the path to this realignment with major arms races with the country most prominent in being overtaken ever more insistent on retaining absolute military supremacy, even at ruinous cost.   Sounds like a formula for a stable, peaceful transition of power and influence, eh?

This is no time for nationalistic resentment and partisan jingoism but with the collapse of social cohesion in the States it's hard to imagine the opportunity being passed over.

So, Obama it is.   He presided over the decline of the United States.   He, a black man, enabled the yellow man to overtake the white man.   It writes itself.

Aerial Buyer's Remorse?

Ever buy something with all the bells and whistles only to realize you spent a lot of money on fancy extras you'll never need or even use?

Don't blame the sales staff.   They're in the business to "up sell" you whenever possible.   There's usually a lot more profit in a $400 widget than in a $100 widget.

Our military leadership seem to be suckers for the "up sell."  They naturally want the latest and greatest.   Theirs is a competitive business and no one wants to be saddled with second-best or third-best.

The question today is whether our military brass has been "up sold" on the F-35 possibly partially stealthy, light attack bomber, and whether that underlies their fanciful low-ball cost estimates; their reticence at coming up with a coherent slate of operational requirements for Canada's next jet fighter and their wildly optimistic predictions that the F-35 will be our frontline fighter for fully half a century?

It's as though they're now trying to "up sell" the government and the Canadian public on this aircraft.

Having been around in Ottawa throughout the process that led to Canada's choice of the CF-18 over the competing F-14, F-15, F-16 and Panavia Tornado, I can state the F-35 debacle is like night and day.   There was far more confidence and certainty in the choice of the CF-18 and virtually none of the controversy and speculation that enshrouds the F-35.   Best of all, once we stipulated our requirements - Canada's requirements, not Japan's - we had a real competition, complete with an extensive fly-off.

There's just way too much arm-twisting and obfuscation with the F-35 and the way it's being ushered in, above and below the table.  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are...

What Stands In The Way of Republican Revival

If the Republicans seriously want to attract minorities, they have to get rid of bigots like Rush Limbaugh.   This jackass can't help himself.   You can skip to the 3:00 mark where Rush explains the difference between light skinned Cuban Hispanics and all those "others" adding that Cubans are unpopular in the Hispanic community because they have a work ethic.

Cold War II is Back, Almost

Within two years China is expected to begin deploying  a fleet of nuclear missile subs.  Nuclear missile  subs or "boomers"in Soviet, American and British fleets were a hallmark of Cold War I.  Many credit their unstoppable retaliatory capability with underwriting the MAD (mutually assured destruction) reality that dampened both sides' appetite for nuclear war.


China in the meantime remains "the most threatening" power in cyberspace and presents the largest challenge to U.S. supply chain integrity, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a draft of its 2012 report to the U.S. Congress.
China is alone among the original nuclear weapons states to be expanding its nuclear forces, the report said. The others are the United States, Russia, Britain and France.

Beijing is "on the cusp of attaining a credible nuclear triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and air-dropped nuclear bombs," the report says.


...The deployment of a hard-to-track, submarine-launched leg of China's nuclear arsenal could have significant consequences in East Asia and beyond. It also could add to tensions between the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies.
Any Chinese effort to ensure a retaliatory capability against a U.S. nuclear strike "would necessarily affect Indian and Russian perceptions about the potency of their own deterrent capabilities vis-à-vis China," the report said, for instance.

A Stealth Fighter Commander Speaks Out - Beware!

One of America's top stealth fighter pilots,  Lt.-Col. Christopher Neimi, has a dire warning to his country about the risks of relying on stealth technology.

”Stealth technology demands significant trade-offs in range, security, weapons carriage, sortie generation, and adaptability. Stealth provides no advantage in conflicts such as those in Afghanistan or Iraq (since 2003), and (despite its obvious utility) it cannot guarantee success in future struggles with a near-peer adversary.”
 
“Most importantly,” Neimi adds, “the cost of F-22s and F-35s threatens to reduce the size of the Air Force’s fielded fighter fleet to dangerously small numbers, particularly in the current fiscal environment.”

The test-pilot-turned-commander is in good company. Three years ago Gen. Harry Wyatt, head of the Air National Guard, said the Pentagon should consider acquiring cheap, upgraded versions of older warplanes to keep his squadrons at full strength.

More recently, the editors of the influential trade publication Aviation Week, a once-stalwart defender of the F-22 and F-35 programs, reversed its pro-stealth position and called on the Pentagon to consider new purchases of old-model planes. “There must be a hedge against further problems.”

But for a decade it’s been the Air Force’s policy not to purchase any non-stealth fighters. The flying branch has bought only so-called “fifth-generation” F-22s and F-35s from Lockheed Martin even as the cost of those fighters steadily increased.

So, with this mounting chorus of cautionary voices emerging in the United States, Lockheed Martin must take great comfort for the unquestioning, unconditional acceptance of the all-too-flawed F-35 by many of America's allies, Canada included.

Canada, too, is vulnerable to the enormous pitfalls resulting from dependence on a pitiful number of these light attack bombers that seem entirely unsuited to Canada's needs at home and perfectly suited to a future tied to America's aerial Foreign Legion.

Niemi made passing reference to another enormous hurdle facing the F-35 and nations that operate it, the challenge of a "near peer" adversary, one that can deploy its own stealth fighters such as China or Russia.

Stealth is arguably better suited to defence than attack.   Range and payload are less of an issue to defenders who can simply refuel and re-arm at ground bases.   Defenders can also rely on ground-based detection systems to identify and guide them to attackers.   The sales pitch for the F-35 is that it will be able to identify and fire on non-stealth defenders before it can be detected and attacked.  That mantra goes straight out the window when the defenders have their own stealth fighters.

JP Morgan, America's Welfare Service Provider

This is hard to swallow but JP Morgan is making a fortune administering food stamp programmes for 26-states.   The proverty business, it seems, is enormously lucrative.

There are just some things that are a little too "creepy" to be "outsourced" to private corporations.  The JP Morgan executive in the interview below does his best to put a positive spin on all this, but it just seems really unsavory for a big Wall Street bank to be making so much money off of the suffering of tens of millions of Americans....

So if unemployment goes down will this ruin JP Morgan's food stamp business?

Well, apparently not.  In the interview Paton says that 40% of food stamp recipients are currently working, and he seems convinced that there could be further "growth" in that segment.

So is this what America is turning into?

A place where tens of millions of the unemployed and the working poor crawl over to Wal-Mart and the dollar store every month to use the food stamp debit cards provided to them by JP Morgan?
It turns out that JP Morgan also provides child support debit cards in 15 U.S. states and they also provide unemployment insurance benefit debit cards in seven states.

Apparently states have found that they can save millions of dollars by "outsourcing" the provision of these benefits to big financial firms like JP Morgan.

So what happens if you have a problem with your food stamp debit card?

Well, you call up a JP Morgan service center.  When you do this, there is a very good chance that you are going to be helped by a JP Morgan call center employee in India.

That's right - it turns out that JP Morgan is saving money by "outsourcing" food stamp customer service calls to India.

When ABC News asked JP Morgan about this, the company would not tell ABC News which states have customer service calls sent to India and which states have them handled inside the United States.... 

JP Morgan is the only one today still operating public-assistance call centers overseas. The company refused to say which states had calls routed to India and which ones had calls stay domestically. That decision, the company said, was often left up to the individual states. 

Just try to imagine the irony - a formerly middle class American that has lost a job to outsourcing calls up to get help with food stamp benefits only to be answered by a call center employee in India.

The Petals Have Fallen Off the TurdBlossom

 Mojo No Mo

George w. Bush gave Karl Rove the nickname "turdblossom."  It's a west Texas term for a desert wildflower that can sometimes grow out of cow dung.

The Republican strategist/organizer went into overdrive in the runup to the 2012 elections, getting wealthy Republicans to part company with some $300-million in donations.   And they're probably wondering why, today, congressional Republicans didn't sweep the field and Mitt Romney isn't packing his bags for a move to the White House.   Now it seems the bloom is off the flower and Karl Rove is left, once again, as just another turd.


In a $6 billion campaign, Rove's ability to part wealthy Republicans from their money made the political operative - who co-founded the American Crossroads "Super PAC" - a force in the party's effort to take down Obama.

Democratic groups raised millions of dollars based on appeals that focused on the threat Rove and the Crossroads groups posed to Democrats.

As it turned out, Obama held the White House and in nine of the 10 Senate races where Rove's groups spent the most money, the Democratic candidate won.

On Wednesday, Republicans' discontent was evident.

Conservative activist Richard Viguerie said in a statement Wednesday that "in any logical universe," Rove "would never be hired to run or consult on a national campaign again and no one would give a dime to their ineffective Super PACs, such as American Crossroads." 

How Israel Misread America

In today's Haaretz, Rabbi Eric Yoffie considers how Israel got everything so wrong and what its leaders must do to make peace with the White House.

Americans are resolutely centrist. Israel’s politics may be veering right, but America’s are not. Despite difficult economic conditions and high unemployment, America reelected a centrist president who speaks the language of moderation, compromise, and social justice.
 
...The hysterical, Obama-hating Jewish conservatives were wrong about everything. They said that Jews could be convinced to shift their votes to Republicans; they couldn’t. They said that Obama was an Israel-hating radical; he isn’t. They said that a Jewish alignment with the Republican Party was the only way to protect Jewish interests; it’s not.

Note to these conservatives: The Democratic Party has won four of the last six presidential elections, and has won the popular vote in five out of six.
  
...Conservative, white Evangelicals are less important than they once were. Americans voters showed little interest in opposition to gay marriage and abortion—the social issues that largely define these Evangelicals. In fact, the voters approved of gay marriage in several states and punished candidates who expressed radical views on abortion.

...Foreign policy remains far down on the priority list for American voters, despite claims to the contrary by neo-conservative leaders. Foreign policy was virtually absent from voter consciousness for most of the campaign. Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer have argued that it would have been a huge advantage for Romney if he had been more aggressive in raising the Libya/Benghazi issue, but there is no evidence to support this assertion. The simple fact is that when it comes to foreign policy right now, Americans don’t much care. 

...the bad news is that personal relationships matter as well, and it is hardly a secret to anyone that the Obama-Netanyahu relationship lacks the respect, openness and affection that previous presidents have had with Israel’s leaders. With an Iranian bomb looming, for this situation to continue is nothing less than a disaster for Israel.

And the key is for the Israel’s prime minister to take the initiative in repairing the relationship. This is not a question, as some commentators have suggested, of Obama and Netanyahu “learning to live with each other.” The election is over. The newly-elected president of the world’s most powerful country is the senior partner; Israel’s prime minister is the junior partner. Mr. Netanyahu needs to act accordingly and do what is necessary to build personal trust with the president of the Jewish state’s most important ally. And he needs to do so now.

It's hard to recall a small country so dependent on a large benefactor getting something like this so wrong.   Netanyahu, who did everything but stuff ballot boxes for Romney, has shown himself to be an inept bully who played his hand recklessly and came away with empty pockets.  Bibi may pay dearly if he doesn't go, cap in hand, to seek forgiveness from the president he so thoroughly disrespected.

Does Obama Have the Killer Instinct He Needs?

Will the United States and the world really have to endure "four more years" or will a new Barack Obama emerge in his second term?

One sign to look for is whether Obama moves quickly to exploit fractures in the Republican ranks with "in your face" policies designed to cut moderate Republicans, and their votes, out of the extremist Republican herd.

This is the moment for Obama to move on Republican "hot button" issues such as inequality and climate change while the GOP is bitterly divided and licking its wounds.   McConnell and Boehner are talking about Obama having to meet them halfway, a truly moving target for those two manipulators.   The Republican House and Senate leadership needs to be roughed up and the coming months may be Obama's best chance to drive wedges in the Republican ranks.

The Congressional Dems could also use a little discipline, something that was lacking in Obama's first term.   Both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi need to up their game.

Let's hope Obama has learned one thing in his first term - that you don't begin negotiations with Republicans by throwing compromise on the table.   That's not your starting point, it's your deal closer.

Will Republicans Accept They Are Their Problem

Barack Obama didn't help much but Mitt Romney was actually taken down by his fellow Republicans.   The Guardian's Simon Tisdall says Romney's downfall came from within.

By campaign end, Romney – moderating his tone and positions – was finally connecting with 2012 America... But the Tea Party zealots, the radical evangelicals, the homophobes, the misogynists and the rest of the unthinking, feckless right had already scuppered his chances. It was too late to turn it around.

Evidence that the Republicans are out of line and out of touch crowded in from battleground states, nearly all of which, from all points of the geographical and social compass, went to Obama. So, too, did the popular vote.
  
The zeitgeist was all Obama's. Liberal causes triumphed in several states that held separate votes on single issues. Maryland and Maine became the first states to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote. Colorado and Washington legalised some marijuana use.

In Ohio, in the heart of America, seen as the ultimate battleground, Obama won handily in the end. A key factor? His decision to bail out the US automative industry, approved by 59% of voters interviewed in early exit polls. Here was another symbolic vote for activist government and state intervention, another body blow for the every-man-for-himself, laissez-faire, free enterprise favoured by the Republican right.

Romney proved a better man than his party deserved. He went up in most people's estimation during the campaign. He was gracious in defeat.

..."Obama-ism" circa 2012 does not mean liberalism, immorality or Godless socialism. Obamaland is where the decent, hard-working open-minded middle lives. There are no signs, yet at least, that Republicans are ready to adjust to the change. A more likely reaction, like that of Britain's Benn-ite left during the Thatcher era, is to lurch ever closer to the political edge in pursuit of political purity and truth.

Tisdall's analysis points to our glaring fact - the Republican Party is toxic.  It's broken.  Since the 60's when the party shifted to its "Southern Strategy" it has always gone for the low-hanging fruit - the racists, the radical fundamentalists, the homophobes, the radical nationalists and war hawks, and, ultimately, the Tea Party - just about every bunch too odious to do the Repugs any long-term good.

Moderate Republicans speak of party renewal, of attracting blacks, Latinos, women and young voters.   But what they're not yet saying openly is what they would first have to do to make that possible.  The road back begins by pumping out the crud in the Republican bilges and that crud isn't going without a fight that could leave today's party dangerously gored.

Running the Numbers on Climate Change

Pricewaterhouse Coopers figures that, from now straight through to 2050, we need annual, global carbon emissions cuts of 5.1%  if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Efforts since 2000, aided by the Great Recession, have resulted in cuts of just 0.8% per year.   At that rate, says PwC, we are headed for 6C of warming by the end of the century.

The report also confirms that greatest rises in greenhouse gas emissions came from the emerging E7 economies of China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey, whose cumulative 7.4 per cent annual increase in emissions swamped record levels of reductions in the UK, France, and Germany.

PwC warns sustained economic growth in these countries could "lock in" high carbon assets that will make it significantly harder for them to decarbonise over the coming decades.

...Meanwhile, businesses in carbon-intensive sectors must also anticipate "invasive regulation" and the possibility of stranded assets, said Jonathan Grant, director of sustainability and climate change at PwC.

"Resilience will become a watchword in the boardroom – to policy responses as well as to the climate," he said. "More radical and disruptive policy reactions in the medium term could lead to high-carbon assets being stranded."

"The new reality is a much more challenging future in terms of planning, financing and predictability," Grant added. "The challenge now is to implement gigatonne-scale reductions across the economy, in power generation, energy-efficiency, transport and industry, as well as REDD+ in forested nations."

Careful Donald, They Might Dust Off the Guillotine

I'm pretty sure I have figured out Donald Trump's affliction - paresis.  If you don't know, Google it.

Trump is now calling for Americans to march on Washington to protest the "great and disgusting injustice" of Obama's re-election.

"We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!," he wrote.

"Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us. (sic)"

Trump, you stupid old bastard, sit down and STFU!  

If Trump wants a revolution, maybe it's time he got his wish.
 

Whither Israel?

Benjamin Netanyahu did everything shy of stuffing ballot boxes for Mitch Romney.  He gambled, and lost.  Now Benny will have to wait to see what his odious efforts have earned him.

Israel awoke to the news it faced what many see as a political and diplomatic relationship in need of rehabilitation.

The close relationship of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with US casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who devoted millions to Mr Romney, was noted by the Obama administration, Eytan Gilboa of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies said.

''This is not a good development … to see Democrat perceptions that the Israeli Prime Minister is actively intervening in the US election,'' Professor Gilboa said.

Criticisms of Mr Netanyahu were quick to emerge. ''The Prime Minister hurt Israel with his arrogant and incomprehensible involvement on the side of Mitt Romney,'' Shlomo Molla, an MP for the opposition Kadima party, told the Jerusalem Post.

The Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said Palestinians hoped Mr Obama would work to end Israel's occupation and realise the establishment of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders ''living side-by-side in peace with the State of Israel''.

 Payback's a completely deserved bitch, Benny.

Time for Obama to "Move to the Center"?

Just Be Grateful His Embalmer is Skilled with Make-up.

Mitch McConnell epitomizes everything that's wrong with and will bring down the Republicans in Congress.   Were he any older they would remove his chair from the Senate and give him a box instead.

McConnell came out swinging this morning, telling Obama it was up to him to move to the center, that, presumably, being wherever the radical Right chooses to put it.

This is, of course, the same reptilian jackass who began Obama's first term by pledging the Republicans would do everything in their power to obstruct America's president and ensure he failed.

Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh muses about just splitting up America.  He envisions drawing a border along the Mississippi with the Republicans taking everything to the west leaving everything east to the Democrats.

Sorry Rush, Republicans can have their states, the Red States, the places that consistently score highest in unwed teen pregnancy, STDs, unemployment, violent crime, poverty and just about every other social disorder curiously linked to fundamentalism.  No one is going to hand over Blue States, the states that actually have economies and bleed tax dollars to subsidize the rednecks that inhabit Rush Country.   And, as for your notion that Dems would immediately be digging tunnels under the border so they can sneak into Republicanland, you need to let last night sink in and realize that the angry old white vote will be a spent force by the time McConnell grows his next chin.

Will Seattle Become Amsterdam on the Pacific? America Turns a Page.

Washingtonians approved same-sex marriage and marijuana decriminalization last night.   This won't exactly trigger a stampede of Vancouverites to Seattle, it's already effectively decriminalized in Vancouver, but it might draw tourists from other states.

I take encouragement from little steps like these that show progressivism is growing next door and it will keep growing.   Much of the "no" vote comes from angry, old white people - emphasis on old.  They're on their way out and will have a dwindling effect in future elections.  

Romney just might have been angry old white America's last hurrah.  It's estimated that the odds shift in the Democrats' favour by about 1.5% each election due to America's rapidly transforming demographics.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham grasps the dilemma confronting the Republican Party.

“If I hear anybody say it [we lost] because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts.  We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”

The civil war now expected to consume the Republican Party and Congressional Repugs will not only be fun to watch,  it could also give Obama and Team Dems the chance they were denied in the past four years to actually pass legislation with some support from reformationist Republicans like Graham.

The Biggest Win of the Evening

The Republicans saw her as a terrible threat.    She prevailed.   This is what progressivism looks like.   Elizabeth Warren.  There is hope.

Suck On It, FOX!

I don't believe I have ever enjoyed watching FOX News - until tonight.   When they declared Barack Obama elected it was as though each of them was made to swallow broken glass.   And I've been waiting so long to see those degenerates swallow broken glass.

Tonight may spark a lot of introspection among the far Right.  They had the corporatist backing, they had the bigots and the racists and the fundies.   They started off the race spotted a handy hunk of the electorate.

To anyone named Koch or Coors or those who sail in their wake, Suck It.

Vote Rigging Video

This needs verification but it sure looks ugly.   Were the Pennsylvania electronic voting machines fixed?  You decide.

To America

It's Fun.   Elizabeth Warren triumphs.  This could be America on the brink of real change, redemption.   Some Nights.

Harper Gags EnviroCan Scientists to Keep Mum about Tar Sands Snowpack Contamination

Stephen Harper and his minions don't want you finding out that tar sands contaminants are accumulating in snow in the vicinity of the bitumen mines.

Harper and his Fossil Fueler bosses always fall back on the same tactic - what you don't know won't hurt them.   And to make damned sure you don't know about the tar sands snowpack contamination, Harper and his political commissars in the PMO have slapped the gags tightly on Environment Canada scientists, the people you pay for with your taxes.   You might pick up their salaries but they're not allowed to talk to you candidly about what they're discovering.   That's because Steve has insinuated himself between them and the taxpaying public, thereby neatly transforming them, against their will, into Steve's partisan political agency.

Environment Canada scientists have confirmed results published by researchers from the University of Alberta showing contaminants accumulating in the snow near oilsands operations, an internal federal document has revealed.

They also discovered contaminants in precipitation from testing in the region.

But the researchers were discouraged from speaking to reporters about their findings, first presented at a November 2011 conference in Boston of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, says the document, released to Postmedia News through access to information.

The original study, led by University of Alberta scientists Erin Kelly and David Schindler, analyzed winter snow and found that contamination levels were "highest near oilsands development compared to farther away," said the document released by the government.

The document, which was attached to an email indicating the information was also in the hands of the office of Environment Minister Peter Kent, provided a scripted list of answers that explained researchers had tested the toxicity of the Athabasca River water in the spring of 2010 with negative results, and also that no link was established between levels of contaminants found and any effect on fish.

The scripted answers also recommended that the federal scientists decline answering questions about the cost of a monitoring system or about Environment Canada's role and actions in the region.

If asked questions of this nature, the scientists were told in the script to say: "I am a scientist. I'm not in a position to answer that question but I'd be happy to refer you to an appropriate spokesperson."

Notice that sound?  That's a another part of your democratic freedoms being flushed down Steve Harper's toilet.

 

Iggy Comes Clean, Redeems Self - a Bit

Michael Ignatieff has a warning - parliamentary democracy is in big trouble and may fall victim to today's authoritarian prime ministers.

“I think something really bad has happened to parliamentary democracies all over the world — not just in my country, Canada. What’s happened is increasing power to the prime minister, increasing power to the bureaucracy, and the legislature — parliament — is a kind of empty, pointless debating chamber because it’s all stitched up in advance by party leaders,” Ignatieff said during a weekend panel discussion, aired by the BBC during its annual Free Thinking Festival.

Ignatieff told Postmedia News by email that his message at the Free Thinking Festival was that, “what is in a party leader or prime minister’s interest is not always in the interest of democracy.”
He added that a “loosening of the party whips may be necessary to keep our democracy from suffocation.”

“Honesty requires me to say I was a party leader once,” Ignatieff quickly acknowledged, “and my instincts were always to shut those people [dissenting Liberal MPs] down wherever I could. So I’m completely, flagrantly contradicting what my interests were not two years ago.”

Kind of makes you wonder where was this Ignatieff during those years he spent in Ottawa?

The Crazies Are Back

These guys are truly lining up to die.   They're a small gaggle of, let's call them eccentrics, preparing to break the 15-year old
land speed record.

The current record of 1,228 kmh., a tad over 763 mph., is held by a Royal Air Force fighter pilot, Andrew Green.   Now Green is preparing to fly drive a new car that he hopes will be 300 mph. faster.

Bloodhound

The new car, the Bloodhound, is powered by a 20,000 lb. thrust jet engine on loan from Green's employer, the RAF, coupled to a 27,500 pound rocket engine for a combined 135,000 horsepower.

And then there's Waldo.   He's Waldo Stakes, CEO of California's Land Speed Research Vehicles.   Waldo's car, the Sonic Wind, relies on the main rocket engine from the venerable X-15 that puts out a somewhat impressive half-million horsepower.   Stakes is shooting for 2,000 miles an hour, almost triple the existing record.

The field now includes two Australian cars, one from New Zealand, and the Ameri-Can North American Eagle built from a surplus RCAF CF-104 minus its wings and horizontal tail.

This stuff is like roller derby.   It becomes amazingly popular and then its gone for another 20-years.   Of course it's not quite the same.   You might break an arm in roller derby.  In the land speed contest you break everything, the lot.

Four War Years

The sense I'm getting from the polls is that Obama is ahead but only just.  Two to three points seems to be the lead, a gap that can probably be easily erased by voter suppression and minor tinkering with the electronic voting system.

Eyebrows will be raised, sure, but that's now standard fare for any election in the self-proclaimed, albeit undeserved Greatest Democracy on Earth (TM).

Yet I'm far from sure that a Romney victory will be the worst thing for America.  It may in fact be what's needed to spark the sort of upheaval without which the United States, and the world, would be worse off for decades to come.   Something needs to break the corporatist hold on the United States and it's hard to imagine that an Obama administration held hostage again by a Republican House and an obstructionist Republican minority in the Senate would do any better than Obama did in his first term.

Romney might just be the straw to break America's back and rouse its beleaguered working classes, white and blue collar, from their stupor and steer them back into defending their collective self-interest.

Romney might be the stimulus required to re-energize the Occupy movement.

It's sad to say but I think the future of the American people, if they're to have one, lies in some sort of popular revolt.   The oligarchs are close to cementing their hold on the country.   American democracy is already reeling from the impacts of a hopelessly corrupt, "bought and paid for" Congress and a similarly corrupt and decidedly corporatist judiciary, aided and abetted by a corporate mass media. 

Imagine what Romney will do, not for America but to it.   More tax cuts for the rich made up for by new taxes on the middle class and the slashing of benefits and assistance for the working poor and the extremely poor.   No action on climate change and an extreme form of austerity that will leave the federal government unable and unwilling to provide adaptation initiatives.   Romney even wants to offload emergency services to the much more cash-strapped state governments.

America seems primed to explode or implode, one of the two.   The status-quo is no longer a viable option.   It will either implode under the crushing pressure of corporatism or explode from the fury of progressive populism.  Romney seems to be the burning fuse that will reveal the outcome.

Is Steve at Risk in India?

Steve Harper has brought his own convoy of armoured cars to India.  TorStar reports the RCMP "at least two" of the prime minister's vehicles, including an armoured limo, to ferry him about during his visit.

Neither the PMO nor the RCMP will comment on why the security India provides wasn't adequate for Steve.   Maybe the Prince of Dankness figured if American Presidents can ferry along their own wheels, so should he.

Ah, it's only money.

Harper and wife Laureen started their day in Agra where they toured the Taj Mahal and came away awestruck at the sight of the majestic landmark.

“It’s iconic. If you’re going to come to India, you have to see this. This is the thing. Believe me it’s worth seeing. I recommend it to anyone,” Harper told reporters after his Monday morning visit.