Our Schizophrenic War on Terror

Ah, yeah, right.

It's tough to win a war when you have to ally yourselves with both sides.  That injects an element of schizophrenia in your policies and planning.  It results in a fatal lack of coherence, a narrative that is hopelessly confused.  And that is what confronts us in our struggle with radical, extremist, murderous Sunni Islam.

But it's unfair to blame the West for this incoherence when the major Arab players gave rise to it and were first afflicted.  They still are and they're dragging us down with them.

We associate our by now familiar enemies - al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and similar groups - with radical Islam often known as Wahabbism.  That's fair enough.  Yet the monied branch of Wahabbism that funds the operational, murderous branch, is our ally.

On Thursday, The Middle East Monitor, ran an op-ed, "If terrorist groups are to be defeated, Saudi Arabia must stop funding those it favours."

...Perhaps contradictorily, the country is blamed widely for the rise of ISIS. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the government in Riyadh has been funding Islamist groups fighting to overthrow President Bashar Al-Assad. It was these groups that gave birth to ISIS.

Saudi Arabia has a long and complicated relationship with Sunni terrorist groups. On the one hand, the kingdom, which denies outright that it funds terrorism, is engaged in a regional cold war with Iran, a Shia state, and as such seeks to strengthen opposition to Shia leaders in the Middle East. As Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 has said, Saudi Arabia is "deeply attracted to any militancy which can effectively challenge Shiadom." The country practices and is run according to Wahabbism, an extreme interpretation of Islam that many Sunni militant groups also follow. On the other hand, Riyadh's rulers feel personally threatened by the ascendancy of groups such as Al-Qaeda in the early 2000s, or ISIS today. This is because they fear that these groups might seek to replace the Saud family with even more extreme Wahabbi leaders. Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's two holiest sites in Makkah and Madinah and as such is always a potential target for fundamentalist groups, which might seek to take over the cities. ISIS propaganda, for instance, vows "to liberate the 'Land of the Two Holy Mosques'."

As a strictly controlled police state with a wealthy state apparatus and an all-powerful monarchy, Saudi Arabia is far better equipped to tackle the internal terrorist threat than most of its neighbours are. However, the root problem will not disappear until Riyadh stops funding, encouraging and nurturing militant groups overseas whenever it suits Saudi interests to do so.

If you can't believe that the Saudis and their Gulf state cousins are playing both sides of this struggle and losing badly at both, you should read this eye-opener published by The Independent in mid-July, 2014.

Thanks to Wikileaks blowing the cover on Hillary Clinton's messages it's obvious that Washington has known since 2009 that the Saudis have been funding the worst terrorism the Middle East has seen.

Petro-states tend to breed incompetent, indulged leaders who sometimes sit upon vast wealth and wonder what to do with it.  Combine that sort of wealth and idleness with fundamentalist religious extremism and it breeds a succession of Islamist extremist terror movements such as al Qaeda and, more recently, ISIS.

The Gulf princes are like Dr. Frankenstein.  They unleash monsters to attack their perceived rivals but when those creations instead also turn on them well then it's time to call in the cavalry, the West.  In the result we'll battle al Qaeda for 15, 20, maybe 50 years, ISIS for who knows how long, and, if we do manage to knock them down, we'll be drawn in to tackle the next terrorist organization our allies, the Gulf oil princes, decide to fund.

So long as we dutifully collaborate with Sunni extremists like the House of Saud, we may never get out of this.  We keep boasting how we have no time for "state sponsored terrorism" and yet we keep showing that is simply untrue.  We know the very worst terrorism sponsoring states and we actually consider them our allies even as they spawn murderous gangs that would be only too happy to attack us.

You don't like monsters?  Then take out Dr. Frankenstein - all the Dr. Frankensteins.  If you don't, your war on terror is nothing more than pissing into the wind.

About That Islamic Terrorism, Who Are We Kidding?

Well those damned Muslims have us in hysterics now.  Rupert Murdoch says this is on all Muslims.  Bill Maher says ditto.

But wait.  There are two strains of Muslims - Sunni and Shia.  Our Muslims of choice, those we consider our allies, are Sunni - Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, that bunch. The Muslims we normally despise and distrust are those other guys, the Shiites.

So, let's step back and look at all this Muslim terrorism that has us in such a state. Let's start with Osama bin Laden.  Sunni.  Al Qaeda, Sunni.  ISIS, Sunni.  Those Muslims Obama keeps whacking with his drones, Sunni.  The Taliban, Sunni. All those wedding parties we brought to an abrupt and terminal end with our gifts of Hellfire missiles, Sunni.  Let's count that up - Sunni, Sunni, Sunni, Sunni, Sunni and Sunni.  So far it's Sunni 6, Team Shia no score.  That's a shut out in any league.  Wowser.

That 9/11 wrecking crew?  All Sunni. About three-quarters of them were Saudi. It's widely believed that the 28-pages redacted by the Bush regime from the 9/11 report fingered the House of Saud as in on the attacks.  Whatever is in those pages even Obama is keeping them under lock and key.

We know that the Salafist/Wahhabist extremists have been lavishly supported by the Gulf states, including the remarkably like-minded Saudis.  You might even call them the terrorists' benefactors.

When the ISIS problem got out of control (and not one minute before) some of these Gulf principalities pledged to - wait for it - stop funding them.

Now you might have thought we would bring the Hammers of Hell down on the heads of these potentates to repay their perfidy.  A hundred or so Tomahawk cruise missiles targeted at their royal palaces likely would have done the trick. But that hasn't happened, has it.

Harper loves the Saudis, especially now that they've inked a $15-billion deal to buy Canadian-built light armoured vehicles to meet their democracy-suppression needs.  And, besides, it wouldn't be seemly for one petro-state to get uppity with another petro-state.

Well we have to whack somebody to avenge the Paris massacre.  Hmm, the Sunnis are out - at least those right at the core of this.  I guess that just leaves the Shia.  I know, let's attack Tehran.

p.s.  That scary banner being carried by the angry mob in the picture above? That could have been written by any crown prince of the House of Saud.

Oh, This is Rich

You might remember media mogul, 'Reptilian Rupert' Murdoch, as the guy who denied any personal responsibility whatsoever for the criminal enterprise he operated, the deservedly late News of the World.  For Rupe, the buck stopped just short of himself.  Right, you rotten old bugger and why haven't you taken a dirt nap by now anyway?

Now the crotchety old fart has come out to contend that all Muslims - the lot of them, the overwhelming majority of peaceful Muslims included - must share responsibility for the Paris massacre at Charlie Hebdo.

Bill Maher last night took his own shot at blaming the entire Muslim world for this outrage.

“Obviously, the vast majority of Muslims would never do anything like this,” said Maher. “But they share bad ideas. This is the thing that caused the big ruckus when Ben Affleck was here. Sam Harris said, ‘Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas,’ and everyone went fuckin’ nuts on this side of the panel. But it is. These two guys who shot up the cartoonists the other day, they were avenging the prophet, they said? A bad idea. Martyrdom? A bad idea. Women as second-class citizens? A bad idea. And unfortunately, the terrorists and the mainstream share a lot of these bad ideas.”

I guess by Maher's logic that would make him personally responsible for every Afghan wedding brought to an abrupt end by a Hellfire missile launched by some bored guy sitting in an air-conditioned trailer 20-miles down the road from Vegas.  Of course Maher is quick enough to criticize that sort of thing but he seems not to hear the criticism of moderate Muslims who denounce atrocities like the Paris massacre.  To him they're all steeped in these same extremist ideas. Except that, if they were the people Maher makes them out to be, he wouldn't be alive today.

The "Meh" Society

There's really no better way to understand another society that to live there.  I have never known the United States better than during the years I spent studying there back in the Vietnam war era.  This is why I was drawn to the observations of Volker Stanzel, former undersecretary of political affairs at the German foreign office.  Stanzel has just wrapped up a period of teaching at an American university on the west coast.  His impressions of the country, its people and their problems are insightful and should resonate with Canadians also.

Stanzel sees Americans as a people who look at their problems, shrug, and move on.

The immense creativity and boldness to be found in research institutions in the United States, in its universities, its enterprises and the power of its industry keep this country ahead of all others.

The country is still much more than its military hardware, contrary to the critics’ claims.

Yet, many conversations about where the country is headed, even in the U.S. itself, end with an implicit acceptance that if China and the other BRICS countries are rising, then that is how it is going to be, and there is not much that can be done about it. That acceptance then extends to the general condition the United States finds itself in.

Where one detects a clear decline is in America’s internal inability to get along with itself. It is a country characterized by internal strife – fiercer now perhaps than at any time since the Vietnam War – and by the lack of improvement in an important range of social conditions.

These shortcomings appear in healthcare, racial relations as well as electronic data surveillance encroaching upon individual freedoms. It is also characterized by the recognition that when America calls, the world does not necessarily follow.

These are challenges that a vibrant, confident United States would have gladly tackled, and treated not as obstacles to but as opportunities for improvement.

Today, the challenges are seen as obstacles or impasses, and they lead to resignation, and, worse, to withdrawal from public engagement – formerly one of the strongholds of American civil society.

The problems are certainly there, and they are not small.

...Instead of pulling together and overcoming whatever hurdles present themselves by aligning all domestic forces to get the job done, here again the response is just a shrug.

...A foreign observer like me wonders what it would take to provoke an effort to tackle a problem that is visible in so many small phenomena.

All of them seem to be remediable, be it housing and employment of African-Americans, underlying racism in White society, or violent protests that require new measures. The president has given a remarkable speech on the issue of race, to no more effect than fleeting marvel and faint praise.

...The NSA scandal, in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, has led to profound, worldwide discussions about electronic monitoring of all human activity.

These discussions pertain to issues that used to be seen as the core of the American project, such as individual freedom and its limits, the social compatibility with what is technologically possible, and the responsibilities of enterprises compared to those of the realm of politics.

What is remarkable at this juncture is that these conversations in the United States about data control have largely remained confined to the sphere of intellectuals. There has been little effort to hold Congress accountable to implement at least the recommendations given by “The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies” of December 2013.

The explanation given for why that is so usually elicits the rather resigned response that things never change anyway. It is seen as pointless to go up against Big Business or the security establishment. Once again, America simply shrugs.

Americans, as Stanzel sees them, have become a "meh" society.  Indifference and resignation reign in a society that would be unrecognizable to Americans from the pre-Reagan era.  They've been worked over, blinkered, indoctrinated, conditioned, manipulated and confounded, put at each others' throats, by those for whom the quest is immediate, short-term gain at the expense of both the nation and society.

The tragic part is that these same trends are alive and well in Canada today, albeit to a less spectacular degree. The ascendancy of corporatism and illiberal democracy, inequality of all forms, the erosion of social cohesion, these ills and many others all are fueled by our indifference and resignation.  Our complacency is a rich opportunity for those who understand how to exploit it.

                      

Can You See Where This is Going?

The latest consumer-grade drones are a big hit at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 in Las Vegas.  The technology behind the latest drones has come a long way.  Not only are they dead easy to fly and self-stabilizing but one of this year's offerings, the Airdog, can even track you.



It's being pitched as a breakthrough in video of sporting events, such as motorsports, and the demonstrations are impressive.  What's less impressive are the alternative applications this technology suggests.

A drone that can autonomously follow an individual at speeds upwards of 40 mph can probably be adapted to do other things such as harassing or even attacking the subject being pursued.  This is akin to military-grade technology in a very difficult to regulate consumer product.

The thing is this Genie is decidedly out of the bottle and, as the range of today's consumer drones steadily increases, it won't take long for some nasty customers to figure out any number of ulterior purposes for it.

Drone Wars, of the Good Kind

This is really disgusting.  Any motorcyclist knows the experience of riding downwind of a pig farm.  In a car you can simply put up the windows and turn off the outside air.  Bikers don't get off so easy.  The smell is horrible.

Most of us don't ever get to a modern, industrial pig farm.  Until now.  Brace yourselves.

Now They've Done It

The rise of the Islamic State, ISIS, has demonstrated how effectively Islamic extremists use social media such as Twitter and Facebook.  Well, they did - past tense.  Now the Charlie Hebdo massacre has earned them an enemy, one they should fear - Anonymous.

Is It Only Terrorism if White People are Attacked?

There was an act of domestic terrorism, an attack on the Colorado office of the NAACP, on January 6th.  You probably never heard of it.  That's because the media didn't cover it.

A bomb, consisting of an explosive device attached to a can of gas, went unnoticed in America's mainstream media.  That is until word leaked out on Twitter and the story went viral.  The outrage became more than the media could take and so they belatedly and obviously reluctantly ran the story.

Reluctantly?  That's certainly the impression you might get from reading the first graph of the USA Today report:  The hashtag #NAACPbombing has gone viral, reflecting frustration among one of Twitter's most vocal communities about what they say is a glaring disparity in how news outlets cover violence against blacks.  Most vocal?  You could easily substitute "uppity" for most vocal.

The cops are looking (we hope) for a suspect described as a balding white male in his 40s driving a dirty white pickup truck.  Good luck with that, cops.

And, if you need another bite of batshit crazy American racism, consider this performance from, what else, FOX.

My Paper is Better than Your Paper

I came to understand how much I appreciate picking up the Times Colonist from my doorstep when I brought in this morning's edition.  I fully expected the front page to have something splashed about the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  Hey, if it bleeds it leads, eh?  And just yesterday our closet queen prime minister bellowed how we're all at war with the jihadists who are lurking in our garages just waiting to detach our heads.

So what was featured on the front page of the TC?  A major report about a fellow from Ucluelet who encountered a cougar in his livingroom.  The cougar had followed Ted Benson's pet cat, Mushka, through the front door looking to have its smaller cousin for dinner.There was one other story about an island family that has to fork out almost $50,000 after their son accidentally set off his school's sprinkler system.

Charlie Hebdo?  That was inside on page A2.  As for the prime minister's call to arms, that made it on the back page of the front section, A14.  Most of the back page was taken up with an advertisement for a sale at a high-end audio-video shop.

It's not unusual to find the TC's lead story a review of a memorable concert the evening before.  Tony Bennett the lead story?  Yes, and that's wonderful - to me at least.

One of the things about living on Vancouver Island, especially well beyond Victoria, is the sure and certain knowledge that you've got far more to fear from cougars than you do from any errant son of Allah.  I've had a couple of close encounters with them.  My daughter spotted one in repose on a tree branch, presumably waiting for a deer dinner to pass unwittingly beneath.  A friend has a 5-acre property outside of town which features a brook and two paths, one frequented by black bears, the other by cougars.  In other words, cougars are far more interesting and newsworthy than a couple of wastrels caught up in radical Islam or a cowardly prime minister who whines about them.

By the way, here's a mental image for you.  Captain Canada, face to face with a cougar, and not a single broom closet for miles.  Can you say ugly brown stain?

Don't Get the Idea that Capping Warming at 2C Still Won't Hurt

Another study confirms that the survival of mankind, indeed most life forms on Earth, demands that we leave at least two thirds of our known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, unburned.  And of the fossil fuels that have to be abandoned, the high-carbon stuff - coal and bitumen - is at the very top of the list.  Sorry, Alberta.  It would have been nice if you had massive fields of the Saudi stuff - sweet, low carbon crude oil that can literally go from the wellhead into a crankcase as is.  You didn't.  You got bitumen, the tarry stuff natives used to use as pitch to seal their canoes.  Not your fault but it can't be helped.

If we don't treat the really high-carbon fuels as off-limits, we may well be heading for up to 5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of this century.  In case you don't realize it, that's an "extinction event."

The target we hear so much about is 2C.  The goal our leaders have set is to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to limit warming by 2 degrees Celsius.  We don't think much about what a 2C world would be like but we should.  We should have a solid grasp on that reality because 2C still leaves us in a survival mode world.

What follows is taken from the 2009 Stern Report.  Grim as it sounds, research in the years since has demonstrated this is actually quite understated.  Still, it's a good starting point for head-clearing.


2C – The temperature limit the scientists want

The heatwaves seen in Europe during 2003, which killed tens of thousands of people, will come back every year with a 2C global average temperature rise. Southern England will regularly see temperatures around 40C in summer. The Amazon turns into desert and grasslands, while increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere make the world's oceans too acidic for remaining coral reefs and thousands of other marine lifeforms. More than 60 million people, mainly in Africa, would be exposed to higher rates of malaria. Agricultural yields around the world will drop and half a billion people will be at greater risk of starvation. The West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the Greenland ice sheet melts and the world's sea level begins to rise by seven metres over the next few hundred years. Glaciers all over the world will recede, reducing the fresh water supply for major cities including Los Angeles. Coastal flooding affects more than 10 million extra people. A third of the world's species will become extinct as the 2C rise changes their habitats too quickly for them to adapt.


3C – Looking increasingly likely


After a 3C global temperature rise, global warming may run out of control and efforts to mitigate it may be in vain. Millions of square kilometres of Amazon rainforest could burn down, releasing carbon from the wood, leaves and soil and thus making the warming even worse, perhaps by another 1.5C. In southern Africa, Australia and the western US, deserts take over. Billions of people are forced to move from their traditional agricultural lands, in search of scarcer food and water. Around 30-50% less water is available in Africa and around the Mediterranean. In the UK, summers of droughts are followed by winter floods. Sea levels rise to engulf small islands and low-lying areas such as Florida, New York and London. The Gulf Stream, which warms the UK all year round, will decline and changes in weather patterns will lead to higher sea levels at the Atlantic coasts.


4C - Possible with an extremely weak deal

At this stage, the Arctic permafrost enters the danger zone. The methane and carbon dioxide currently locked in the soils will be released into the atmosphere. At the Arctic itself, the ice cover would disappear permanently, meaning extinction for polar bears and other native species that rely on the presence of ice. Further melting of Antarctic ice sheets would mean a further 5m rise in the sea level, submerging many island nations. Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey become deserts and mid-Europe reaches desert temperatures of almost 50C in summer. Southern England's summer climate could resemble that of modern southern Morocco.


5C and above – Highly unlikely nightmare scenario

With a 5C rise, global average temperatures would be hotter than for 50m years. The Arctic region sees temperatures rise much higher than average – up to 20C – meaning the entire Arctic is now ice-free all year round. Most of the tropics, sub-tropics and even lower mid-latitudes are too hot to be inhabitable. The sea level rise is now sufficiently rapid that coastal cities across the world are largely abandoned. Above 6C, there would be a danger of "runaway warming", perhaps spurred by release of oceanic methane hydrates. Could the surface of the Earth become like Venus, entirely uninhabitable? Human population would be drastically reduced.

Notice how 5C was dismissed as "highly unlikely"?  That part of it has been dropped from current scenarios.  In the Arctic the tundra and underlying permafrost are already being impacted.  Tundra is drying out, catching fire and we're powerless to put out these fires.  They result in black soot, a good bit of which gets deposited on the Greenland ice sheet accelerating melting.  As the tundra burns the permafrost beneath melts and collapses, releasing stored methane.  At the time of the Stern Report we thought this sort of thing was still decades off.  

The reality is that the 2C target was really just the limit for adaptation.  There were means for some advantaged countries to adapt to the impacts, albeit not without a good deal of economic and social dislocation.  We still talk 2C but those who maintain that fantasy often turn out to be the same politicians intent on maximizing extraction of our massive fossil fuel reserves.

To help get some idea of 2C consider that we're already dealing with early-onset climate change impacts and we're just at 0.8C over pre-industrial temperatures.

Yet other than politicians who would just like the whole business to go away, few climate scientists believe we have any hope of 2C and we're more probably looking at 4C or worse.  

2C, 4C, 5C - forget about it.  It's a distraction.  What you need to focus on is the point that, no matter how much warming is already "locked in" we can ensure that the future is far more dangerous than necessary if we don't sequester high-carbon fossil energy just as quickly as possible.  A recent study by the World Bank concluded that we've already locked in warming of 1.5C for our grandkids even if we completely decarbonize our economies and our societies today.  Yet, despite already bequeathing our grandchildren a truly miserable environment, our fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase year after year.  Every tonne of CO2 we emit to the atmosphere simply adds to that 1.5C future.

Sure choosing life over fossil energy is going to be calamitous.  Our stock markets are inflated with energy stocks the value of which is premised on fossil fuel reserves at fictional market values.  There are many trillions of dollars of unrealizable carbon assets on our markets.  You can't simply write off that much notional wealth without massive economic fallout.  The upheaval is going to be painful, especially for those with portfolios stuffed with energy stocks and bonds. Yet that's a small price to pay for avoiding extinction.  A small price indeed.

Ditching the Energy Superpower Illusion

Mankind is coming to a decision point.  We can either walk away from high-carbon fossil fuels, leave the stuff in the ground, and keep our fingers crossed that somehow we'll stay within the 2-degree Celsius target cap for global warming this century or we can stay the current course and usher in a catastrophic 5C of warming.

There is an range of fossil fuels with significant differences in their individual carbon footprint.  Natural gas, if you can ignore the disastrous leakage loss problem, is cleanest.  Sweet, light crude oil of the sort that's pumped out of wells in the Middle East is the runner up.  Then you get into unconventional (seabed) and heavy tar/oil (Athabasca) that require a lot of carbon-intensive energy to extract and process.  Coal comes in last.  It's bloody awful.

We know that if we're to have any chance of making the 2C target, somewhere between two-thirds and four-fifths of known fossil fuel reserves will have to be left underground.  Even the Globe & Mail finally gets that.

A new analysis of world-wide fossil fuel resources concludes that, as far as the contentious Keystone XL pipeline is concerned, most of the bitumen that pipeline is meant to carry needs to be left underground in Athabasca.

Advocates of Keystone XL point out that the oil sands are not as large a contributor to climate change as other fuel reserves elsewhere in the world, particularly coal. The study does not disagree with this assessment, but makes clear that a concerted global effort will be needed to maintain at least a 50-per-cent chance of staying under the two-degree limit – a goal agreed to by the majority of nations, including Canada, under the 2009 Copenhagen accord.

As previous studies have already shown, roughly two-thirds of fossil fuels that can already be extracted at a competitive price will need to remain unburned before 2050 to achieve this goal. The new analysis shows that in order to optimize costs and benefits, that two-thirds cannot be evenly distributed around the world, but must be skewed toward more carbon-intense fuels situated far from potential markets. The computer model suggests that it will be next to impossible to meet climate targets if those fuels are tapped to a significant degree, even as producers continue to develop these reserves.

“I think the most sobering thing from this study is the gulf that it reveals between the declared intention of the politicians and the policy-makers to stick to two degrees, and their willingness to actually contemplate what needs to be done if that is to be even remotely achieved,” said Paul Ekins, a co-author of the study.

In broad terms, the analysis reveals that meeting the two-degree limit will require the curtailing of coal burning to the extent that 82 per cent of global reserves, primarily in the United States and the former Soviet Union, should stay in the ground. Natural gas, which is less carbon-intense, is the most favourable fuel in the analysis. The authors stress that gas will be essential in the transition to a low-carbon future.

Oil occupies a middle ground in the study, but as the optimized model shakes down, Alberta’s oil sands end up largely unused.

The analysis is a big step in compelling two-faced politicians to declare whether they want to preserve the world for future generations or continue to exploit high-carbon fossil fuels.  They've got to choose - profits for the oil giants today or a livable future for your grandkids.  They'll duck and weave and lie through their teeth but it's enough to know that, if they don't acknowledge that the tar sands have to be left in the ground, they're voting against your grandchildren.  It's really that simple, that cut and dried.  And that doesn't just go for Harper but equally for Trudeau and Mulcair.

So it comes down to you.  It's the Ralph Nader Conundrum.  Do you support a pair of closet fossil fuelers to get rid of Harper and support people who don't have the courage to stop the ruin of your grandkids' future or do you finally say "no, not until you change?" 

How a Court Pushed Israel and the United States into Meltdown

What is it about the International Criminal Court that has so inflamed Israel and the United States?  It's a court of law and a pretty good one at that.  It's a venue to prosecute those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Who would be bothered by that - except perhaps war criminals and those who commit crimes against humanity?  Oh, I get it.

Israel is afraid that its war crimes in Gaza will come before the ICC where Israel won't be able to control the narrative and manipulate the press and public opinion.  The United States fears for what that could mean to Israel.  The US doesn't hold a veto over the International Criminal Court so it can't protect Israel as it has for decades on the UN Security Council.  Washington is used to being able to simply nullify any effective intervention by the United Nations.  Can't do that with the ICC which is one reason the US hasn't joined the court.  It can't. Too many presidents and cabinet secretaries might find themselves in the prisoner's dock.

So what is America's response to the audacity of the Palestinians in joining the community of nations through the International Criminal Court?  They're going to cut off American aid to Palestine and the Republicans who now control both houses of Congress will push that through.

[Lindsey] Graham, the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that governs aid to Palestine, said Israeli officials are no longer opposed to efforts to chip away at the roughly $400 million of aid the United States sends to Palestine every year — a policy change he plans to capitalize on.

“I’m going to lead the charge to make sure the Palestinians feel this,” he said.

Others on Capitol Hill feel similarly emboldened.

On Wednesday, Jan. 7, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul introduced legislation to prohibit all assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it withdraws its request to join the International Criminal Court. “Certainly groups that threaten Israel cannot be allies of the U.S.,” said Paul. The United Nations has confirmed that the Palestinians will become part of the criminal court in April.

Brian Darling, a spokesman for the libertarian-leaning Republican, said his office hasn’t received any pushback on the legislation, a shift from just last spring when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Likud-flavored lobbying organization with close ties to the Netanyahu government, immediately came out against his previous bill to defund the PA.

On Monday, Haaretz reported that Jerusalem would be contacting pro-Israel members of Congress to ensure that aid to the PA is cut off. While pro-Israel lawmakers such as Graham, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) told FP they’re not aware of an overt push by the Israelis to defund, the understanding is that Jerusalem will no longer actively protect Palestinian aid on the Hill.

Maybe it's time for another benefactor, China perhaps, to step up and provide the aid America cuts.  China could easily stare down an Israeli naval blockade.  It's time to break this poisonous American hegemony.

Baked Alaska

If there's something synonymous with Alaska surely it has to be snow.  Well that used to be the case but, in case you haven't heard, things are changing pretty rapidly and dramatically in the far north.

Take Anchorage, Alaska for example.  It set a record in 2014.  For the first time since records were kept, Anchorage was snow free for an entire year.

Remember in February when Atlanta froze over and turned into a giant icy parking lot?  On that same day, the small town of Seward, Alaska recorded a balmy high of 62F.

Jesus Christ - It Seems He Was Onto Something

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

The gospels of Matthew (19:24), Luke (18:25) and Mark (10:25) all attribute the identical words to Jesus.  In these days of rampant and runaway inequality they're good words to keep in mind, especially if you believe in heaven and hell. The rich may have it all their way now but they'll get their comeuppance on the other side of the eternal curtain, eh?

I wonder if Jesus knew what we're only now scientifically documenting about rich people - that they're shits.



1. Too Much Money Can Make You Greedy: Researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute interviewed 30,000 people and found that richer Americans are more likely to shoplift than the poor. Another study at UC Berkeley found that the “richer the person was,” the more likely they'd pilfer candy from a jar labeled only for children.

2. Too Much Money Can Make You A Cheater: UC Berkeley's Paul Piff had participants of different income levels play a game that offered a $50 cash prize. He found that people with incomes of $150,000 a year cheated four times more than those who made $15,000 a year. This is striking because $50 makes a much bigger difference in your life if you make $15,000 a year than $150,000 year. It could mean the difference between paying a bill or not, having lunch or going without, or buying a friend a beer.

3. Too Much Money Can Make You More Stingy: Nonprofit researchers looked at charitable giving and found that people with incomes below $25,000 give away around 4.2% of their income while those of at least $150,000 in income give away around 2.7 %.

4. Too Much Money Can Make You Less Empathetic: UCLA's Keely Muscatell found that people with great income “exhibit less activity in the regions of the brain associated empathy when shown pictures of kids with cancer.” Researcher Dacher Keltner found in twelve different studies that “lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

5. Too Much Money Can Make You More Difficult To Satisfy: Harvard's Michael Norton asked people how happy they were, and found that rich people consistently “said they needed two to three times more than they had to feel happier.”

So, consider your poverty a blessing.  Think of it as an enormous hurdle you won't have to clear to get through St. Peter's gate.

Who Knew? Tory Poster Boy, Sir John A., Was a Right Racist Bastard.

They never taught this stuff when I was in high school.  Arlene Ewert writes in today's Victoria Times Colonist that our veneration of Sir John A. Macdonald is undeserved and seriously misplaced.

Macdonald was articulate in his plans to build the country we call Canada:

“Indian [First Nations] children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men [people],” he said on May 9, 1883, when he was Superintendent General of Indian Affairs.

“Take the Indian out of the child.…”

Reference to the Métis as “miserable half-breeds,” December 1869.

A key aspect of Macdonald’s method of preparing the land for railway construction and settlement was the subjugation and forced removal of indigenous communities from their traditional territories. Despite guarantees of food aid in times of famine in Treaty Six, Canadian officials used food, or rather denied food, as a means to ethnically cleanse a vast region from Regina to the Alberta border as the Canadian Pacific Railway took shape.

Macdonald, acting as both prime minister and minister of Indian affairs during the famine, even boasted that the indigenous population was kept on the “verge of actual starvation,” in an  attempt to deflect criticism that he was squandering public funds.

After encouraging men from China to work on the railroad, Macdonald justified an amendment taking the vote away from anyone “of Mongolian or Chinese race.” He warned that, if the Chinese (who had been in British Columbia as long as Europeans) were allowed to vote, “they might control the vote of that whole province” and their “Chinese representatives” would foist “Asiatic principles,” “immoralities” and “eccentricities” on the House “which are abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.”

Macdonald was the only politician in the parliamentary debates to refer to Canada as “Aryan” and to justify legalized racism on the basis not of alleged cultural practices but on the grounds that “Chinese” and “Aryans” were separate species and that “the cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be.”

Well, at least he didn't bed his slaves.  He didn't have slaves, did he?  Hmm.  And I thought all this racist stuff got into the Tory ranks when the Reformers hopped aboard.  

Free Speech Isn't Always Free

Twelve dead, as many again wounded, after a terror attack on the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.  Paris police have launched a manhunt for the gunmen who escaped after attacking the magazine's offices.

Nobody has come right out and said Muslim terrorists were behind the attack but Charlie Hebdo has been intensely needling Islam for some time.

Moments before Charlie Hebdo’s offices were attacked, the magazine’s Twitter handle published a cartoon wishing a happy new year “and particularly good health” to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State (Isis).

Its cover this week features Michel Houellebecq’s provocative new novel, Submission, which satirises France under a Muslim president. These are just the latest examples of a publication that responds to efforts at intimidation by being even more irreverent or outrageous, defying the constraints of religious sensitivity or political correctness.

In November 2011, the magazine’s offices were fire-bombed after it published a special edition, supposedly guest-edited by the prophet Muhammad and temporarily renamed “Charia Hebdo”. The cover was a cartoon of Muhammad threatening the readers with “a hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing”.

The petrol bomb attack completely destroyed the Paris offices, the magazine’s website was hacked and staff were subjected to death threats. But that did not deter the magazine, whose editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, has received death threats and lives under police protection.

Six days later, the magazine published a front page depicting a male Charlie Hebdo cartoonist passionately kissing a bearded Muslim man in front of the charred aftermath of the bombing. The headline was: L’Amour plus fort que la haine (Love is stronger than hate).

Less than a year later, the magazine published more cartoons of Muhammad, including images of him naked and a cover showing him being pushed along in a wheelchair by an Orthodox Jew. The French government had appealed to the editors not to go ahead with publication, and shut down embassies, cultural centres and schools in 20 countries out of fear of reprisals when they went ahead anyway.

Riot police were also deployed to the Charlie Hebdo offices to protect it from direct attacks. The foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, publicly criticised the magazine’s actions, asking: “Is it really sensible or intelligent to pour fuel on the fire?”

This tragedy illustrates the fine line that can exist between free speech and gratuitous satirical provocation that can trigger a predictable outcome.  Canada has a blathering loudmouth who will undoubtedly jump all over this, praising the Charlie Hebdo publisher, Stephane Charbonnier, for his courage in standing up to radical Islam.  Yet it wasn't Charbonnier who forfeited his life but those of his employees for whom he has a clear responsibility for the entirely foreseeable result.

It's a dangerous world full of very dangerous and fanatical people and it was those very fanatics that Charbonnier relentlessly needled.  And for what?

Update - a report from Slate.com cites witnesses as stating that the gunmen identified themselves as belonging to Yemeni al Qaeda.

Update - The New York Times reports that the attackers also killed publisher Charbonnier.  The paper also reports that another of the victims was a police officer assigned to protect Hebdo.  The Guardian reports that among the dead were three of Hebdo cartoonists - Cabu, Wolinski and Tignous.

The Top Ten Wars of 2015

Look, papa.  Visitors!

And a Happy New Year to you too.

The new president of the International Crisis Group, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has issued his own New Year greetings in an article on the ten wars to watch in 2015 in Foreign Policy magazine.

For the most part they're the old familiars that continue to plague Africa, the Middle East and Asia with two exceptions, Venezuela and Ukraine.  So, to summarize, here's the rundown.  No. 10 - Venezuela.  No. 9 - Libya and the Sahel.  No. 8 - Yemen.  No. 7 - Afghanistan.  No. 6 - the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).  No. 5 - Somalia.  No. 4 - Nigeria.  No. 3 - South Sudan.  No. 2 - Ukraine.  No. 1 - Syria, Iraq and the Islamic State.

You can follow the link to get the details.  What's important is that the list is not exhaustive nor does it reflect growing tensions elsewhere that could evolve into major wars in the coming years.  I found Guehenno's introductory comments most cogent:

Conflict is again on the rise after a major decrease following the end of the Cold War. Today’s wars kill and displace more people, and are harder to end than in years past.

The Arab world’s turmoil deepened: The Islamic State captured large swathes of Iraq and Syria, much of Gaza was destroyed again, Egypt turned toward authoritarianism and repression, and Libya and Yemen drifted toward civil war. In Africa, the world watched South Sudan’s leaders drive their new country into the ground. The optimism of 2013 faded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ebola ravaged parts of West Africa, and Boko Haram insurgents stepped up terrorist attacks in northern Nigeria. The international legal order was challenged with the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and war is back in Europe as fighting continues in eastern Ukraine.

So what do the last 12 months tell us is going wrong?

On a global level, increasing geopolitical competition appears, for the moment at least, to be leading to a less controlled, less predictable world. This is most obvious, of course, with regard to the relationship between Russia and the West. It’s not yet zero-sum: The two nations still work together on the Iran nuclear file, the threat of foreign terrorist fighters, and, for the most part, on African peacekeeping. But Russia’s policy in its neighborhood presents a real challenge, and its relationship with the United States and Europe has grown antagonistic.

China’s relations with its neighbors also remain tense and could lead to a crisis in the East or South China Seas. The struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia shapes the contours of violence between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East. Major Sunni powers are themselves divided: The contest between the Saudis, Emiratis, and Egypt on the one hand, and Qatar and Turkey on the other, plays out across North Africa. Elsewhere on the African continent, powers jostle in Somalia and in South Sudan’s increasingly regionalized war; and the DRC has long been a venue for its neighbors’ competition over influence and resources.

Rivalry between major and regional powers is nothing new, of course. But hostility between big powers has stymied the U.N. Security Council on Ukraine and Syria — and leaves its most powerful members less time and political capital to invest on other crises. As power gets more diffuse, antagonism between regional powers matters more. Competition between powerful states increasingly lends a regional or international color to civil wars, rendering their resolution more complex.

... jihadi groups remain a persistent, growing threat. The Islamic State and its new affiliates in Sinai and North Africa, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabab in Somalia and Kenya, and al Qaeda franchises in South Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Yemen, and the Sahel are destabilizing governments, killing civilians, and radicalizing local populations. But grouping these movements is often pointless: While they say their ambitions are global, diverse radical enterprises feed off local grievances.

Although these jihadist groups use horrific terrorist tactics, they are more than just terrorists. They seek to control territory. They often blend brutal tactics with astute political or social outreach. Some present themselves as alternatives to a corrupt and unjust state, providing basic public goods — particularly security and justice, albeit often cruel variants thereof — when a government has failed to do so. Few of the wars they fight in are initially driven by international jihad. Extremist ideology often comes late to the party, and always amid other sources of violence. But once there, it makes finding a mediated end to wars much more challenging.

Clearly such diverse problems don’t lend themselves to generic prescription. Solutions require a granular understanding of each conflict, its drivers, its protagonists, their motives and interests. Any response needs to be tailored to context. But we can offer a few general ideas based on the past year.

First, too often this year, policy has lacked a political strategy. This applies as much to the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State as it does to the Nigerians’ against Boko Haram. Military action won’t work alone; in fact, it often perpetuates underlying drivers of conflict — power inequalities, underdevelopment, state predation, identity politics and so forth. What keeps countries together are political settlements. Ending wars or avoiding crises requires a process that steers toward that.

Second, talking makes sense more often than not. The bright spots of this year — the Iranian nuclear file, Colombia’s peace talks, Tunisia’s transition, U.S.-Cuba relations — all show the value of dialogue, even when awkward or unpopular. Of course there are risks, particularly in talking to groups with exclusionary agendas or where criminal motives outweigh political ones. But at the moment the balance is dangerously weighted against dialogue: Policymakers need to be more flexible, eschew dogmatic declarations about who they can or cannot speak to, and where force is necessary, wed it with engagement, even if only to isolate those who are genuinely beyond the pale.

Third, political inclusion should more frequently be a guiding principle of today’s leaders. Over time, that means building institutions that are representative, effective, and protect all citizens — long, arduous, and intensely political work. In fragile countries, the rush to elections that empower the winner at the detriment of the loser, or to ratify constitutions that concentrate power in one individual are dangerous. Exclusion is a major driver in many of today’s wars — all main groups need a seat at the table to protect their interests.

Fourth, it is much better to prevent crises than to try to contain them later. This means engaging before local conflicts gain a jihadi dimension, for example. It means addressing communities’ grievances before they take up arms. It means trying to end wars before factions fragment, making peace efforts more difficult.

Particularly important is to shore up those states in troubled regions that are reasonably stable, or at least have not yet collapsed. This means making sure military aid does not entrench rulers and perpetuate bad habits. But it also means greater caution in advocating regime change, instead nudging leaders toward more inclusive politics, better provision of basic public goods and services, tackling corruption, and improving relations with neighbors. None of this is easy, particularly given the many crises occupying world leaders. But it is clearly better than picking up the pieces afterwards. In fact, given that that the world’s crisis management capacity is already at breaking point, a collapse in another region — like Central Asia, for example, or the Gulf — would be disastrous.

Guehenno's world view is reminiscent of what had been Canada's foreign policy approach pre-Harper.  If anything it serves as an indictment of the Harper-Baird "shoot'em up" approach to international relations with its black and white simplicity.

Oh, What a Thought? Our Inalienable Right to Environmental Security from Our Government.

By hook and by crook the Harper government has been relentless in pillaging Canada's environment.  Hazmat trafficking in bitumen, oil spills, leaky tailing ponds, air pollution, pipelines and exploding trains, rigging environmental assessments, gutting environmental protections, even leaving an entire pristine coast undefended.

But it's a duly elected government.  It has the right to do these things, does it not?

Not quite.  Not according to the "public trust" doctrine that traces back to Roman times.

In the final episode Thursday of Bill Moyers’ long-running interview show, legal scholar Mary Christina Wood, author of the book “Nature’s Trust,” traced use of the public trust doctrine through American history and all the way back to Rome.

“The heart of the approach,” Wood explained, is “that government is a trustee of the resources that support our public welfare and survival. And so a trust means that one entity or person manages a certain wealth, an endowment, so to speak, for the benefit of others. And in the case of the public trust, the beneficiaries are the present and future generations of citizens. So it is a statement of, in essence, public property rights that have been known since Roman times.

“In fact, this was articulated by the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a landmark public trust decision last year. And the decision basically overturned a statute that the Pennsylvania Legislature had passed to promote fracking. And the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Chief Justice Castille, said this violates the public trust. And he began his opinion by saying that citizens hold inalienable environmental rights to assure the habitability of their communities.

“And that these are ensconced in the social contract that citizens make with government. They cannot be alienated. They are inherent and reserved. So they are of a constitutional nature. And the point of the public trust is that the citizens hold these constitutional rights in an enduring natural endowment that is supposed to support all future generations of citizens in this country. It is so basic to democracy; in fact, the late Joseph Sax said the trust distinguishes a society of citizens from serfs.”

I do have to admit that, under the darkness of the Harper regime, I have been feeling decidedly serf-like.  It's all for today, for someone else.  The future be buggered.  Our grandkids can inherit a despoiled Canada that we've bequeathed to them.  Unlike Norway, we'll have nothing but ruinous debt and ecological devastation to pass along when it's their turn to take over.

Maybe, just maybe, we'll become inspired by activists in other lands to demand accountability from our political classes.  Maybe.

Charlie Booker's Wipe

What do you think?  Have you been conditioned to accept powerlessness?



Pick up the video at about 25:38

It's America's Problem. Why Make It Canada's?

One of These Is a Fighter.  Your Guess.

Imagine what would happen if you showed up for your first day of work at a new job with no pants.  That, in a way, is the story of the Lockheed F-35.

Perhaps to keep antsy foreign customers in line, the US military set 2015 as the service entry date for the overdue, over budget and under-performing light strike bomber.  It's now known that this aerial boondoggle won't be showing up ready for work.  The software needed to operate its 4-barrel gun won't even be finished until 2019.  And the F-35 will only be able to carry a paltry 180-rounds of ammunition anyway.  A quick squirt, maybe two, and you're done.

Pierre Sprey, a founding member of America's "Fighter Mafia" that drove the development of high-performance, low-cost warplanes like the F-16 and A-10, believes the F-35 has enough political muscle to survive - but not for long.

The F-35 is in serious trouble, the latest is over the gun system. It is being reported that is due to a computer glitch – that is a severe understatement.

What it is really due to is two things: one, the disaster of ridiculously over-complex computer software system; and two, the fact that the gun itself is mainly for the purpose of close support and close in the air combat and the air force does not think that either of those are important.

...But it is not that it is a glitch that has suddenly arrived and said, “Oh, we were going to have a gun, we won't have one till 2019” – they never even planned to have software to have the gun work until 2019.

And they are so far behind schedule, it is amazing. Since the beginning of the software engineering every year they've been losing six months of schedule. So they are supposed to advance a year – every year they lose six more months.

So when they promise 2019 for the fourth version of this software that might be able to shoot the gun, it is very likely that it will be another year or two later than that. This is a promise simply based on the current schedule which they’ve never held.

...So far they are spending as much effort on public relations to try to smooth the overall problems they’ve been having in actually engineering and designing the airplane. So unless there is some terrific series of crashes, I think, for the meanwhile, there is no chance that they will cancel the program.

I do predict that they will have that much trouble within the next few years, and that we will never see them build more than 500 of these airplanes. That the airplane will become technically such an embarrassment that they'll pretend they did not really need it anyhow, and that “it’s alright we have a better idea, we are working on a new airplane and forget about the F-35.”

That is exactly what they did with the F-111, which was equally a huge technical embarrassment and all the sudden the airplane wasn’t that necessary and instead of building 1,500 we only built 500. I think that is the scenario you will see for the F-35. Out of embarrassment in the next five years, they'll simply walk away from it.

Which ever party forms the next government, it's vital to Canada to walk away from this aerial turkey.  Locking our forces into this could be disastrous for decades to come.  The Americans are big enough that they can just ditch it and move on to the next plane.  We can't afford that.  We're going to have to live with it for  very long time.

And then there's James Fallows "heads up" piece from The Atlantic.

What's a Single Issue Prime Minister to Do?

These are not good times for Canada's petro-prime minister.  Harper's Holy Grail, Canadian energy superpowerdom, has sprung a leak.  Even The Globe & Mail, says bitumen no longer makes any economic sense.

If $40 a barrel still seems a ways off, consider that the benchmark price for oil sands crude is already trading in that price range. What’s more, if production from high-cost sources isn’t withdrawn from an oversupplied market, oil prices may soon be trading even lower.

The first thing Canadians should recognize about the new world order for oil prices is that – contrary to what we’re being told by our federal government – the economy is no longer in dire need of any new pipelines. For that matter, it can live without the new rail terminals being built to move oil as well. Yesterday’s transportation bottlenecks aren’t relevant in today’s marketplace.

At current prices there won’t be any massive expansion of oil sands production because those projects, which would produce some of the world’s most expensive crude, no longer make economic sense.

The recent spate of project cancellations by global oil giants – Total’s Joslyn mine, Shell’s at Pierre River, and Statoil’s Corner oil sands venture – is only the beginning. As oil prices grind lower, we can expect to hear about tens of billions of dollars of proposed spending that will be cancelled or indefinitely postponed.

...If plunging oil prices are writing a boom-to-bust story in provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, the narrative will be much different in other parts of the country.

Ontario’s long-depressed economy is already beginning to find a second wind, recently leading the country in economic growth. And the engine is just beginning to rev up. As the largest oil-consuming province in the country, lower oil prices put more money back into the pockets of Ontarians, while also juicing the buying power of its most important trading partner. Ontario’s trade leverage with the U.S. is set to become even more meaningful as the Canadian dollar continues to slide along with the country’s rapidly fading oil prospects.

Just as the oil sands boom turned Canada’s currency into a petrodollar, pushing it above parity with the greenback, the loonie is already tumbling in the wake of lower oil prices. And it shouldn’t expect any help from the Bank of Canada, which continues to signal that it’s willing to live with a much lower exchange rate in the face of a strengthening U.S. dollar.

A loonie at 75 cents means GM and Ford may once again consider Ontario an attractive place to make cars and trucks. Even if they don’t, you can bet others will. With the loonie’s value falling to three quarters of where it was only a few years ago, we’ll start seeing Ontario, as well as other regions of the country, start to regain some of the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs that were lost in the last decade amid a severely overvalued currency.

Yes, kids, that was the very conservative Globe & Mail admitting that Eastern Canada has for years been afflicted by the Athabasca-borne "Dutch Disease."  Harper, Oliver, Flaherty and the rest of the parliamentary clown car have expended massive energy in denying it but Alberta's wealth (the money they've long since 'pissed away') has hurt Canada's manufacturing sector and the hundreds of thousands of workers that lost their jobs. 

That Thing About How Those Who Forget Their History are Doomed to Relive It? Confirmed.

Autumn Forge.  Familiar, No?

Not many - certainly not enough - of us have any vivid recollection of the Cold War that spanned the second half of the 20th century.  If we did, we wouldn't be so complacent about our "leaders" firing up Cold War II for no remotely legitimate cause so soon afterward.

No "legitimate cause"?  Yes, sorry to break it to you but Ukraine isn't worth it, not even close.  Let's be honest.  We like the neo-Ukrainian separatist apparatus just like Reagan adored the Contras.  Our affection for them is and will remain well shy of their political utility to us.  We're all for them, 100 per cent, to a carefully calculated point beyond which we have no interest in going.  It's all Kabuki theatre.

The worst thing any government can do today is to make Russia afraid of Western intervention.  They've endured that game as far back as Napoleon and there are Russians alive today who survived Hitler's adventures.  We discount that to irrelevance largely because we've never seen a Napoleon marching his troops down our streets.  The closest thing we ever dealt with was half-assed American soldiers in the War of 1812 and, even then, we relied on the Brits for most of the gunplay (Quebec deservedly excepted and venerated).

There seem to be two main groups in Canada these days: those who never experienced Cold War I and those who allowed 20-years to erase it from their consciousness.   I remember it.  I was a real Cold Warrior.  That was in the immediate post-Kennedy/Cuban Missile Crisis era when everybody on both sides seemed to be at hair-trigger setting.  I wanted to defend Canada and I'm sure there was no end of Ivans, Alexis, Vladimirs and Sashas on the other side who were in it for the very same reason, their Rodina.

Cold War, like the one we're dangerously intent on starting up today, is so insidious because of the way it entraps the civilian population.  You just set up an enemy of choice and, handled even somewhat competently, you can steer public opinion against a supposed threat of your own making.

I call what's happening today Cold War II is because I think it's not particularly descended from Cold War I.  Cold War I was waged with some sense of balance, "mutually assured destruction."  Cold War II didn't evolve to the point of mutually assured destruction, that's been its starting point.  Obviously strategic doctrine has mutated such that mutually assured destruction is no longer the miners' canary.  Today's leaders are willing to contemplate that very outcome in their foreign policy.  They're playing with your and your kids' and grandkids' lives.  Their lives are like comped chips on the table at Vegas. Easy come, easy go.

How does that make you feel?

Think on it a minute.  Do you really, really want to go back to this?

When the Shooting Starts, It'll Probably be Here

Sure this is a bummer to start the new year but arms races are a major cause of war, often unintended and undesired.  It's not just the country buying all the new hardware that starts this sort of war but also the country that fears it will be even more vulnerable in the years ahead so it might as well take its best shot now and hope for a favourable peace settlement.  That thinking, after all, was instrumental in Japan's decision to attack US bases in WWII.

This same dynamic is in play now across Asia.  India fears Pakistan.  Pakistan fears India.  Everybody fears China.  Everybody is buying advanced submarines as quickly as they can come off the ways.  Aircraft?  A seller's market.  Even the city state of Singapore, population 5.4-million (well shy of the Greater Toronto area), spends 9.8-billion on defence, almost half Canada's total expenditure.

The Exorcism of Stephen Joseph Harper

Steve, He's Coming for You

Stephen Harper has a problem.  The Holy Father is coming for him and the rest of his ilk.  This time it's not a legion of scientists who can be gagged and dismissed or a bunch of whiny Third World leaders up to their knees in rising sea water to be ignored.  It's Pope Francis, indisputably the most powerful living religious icon on the planet.  And it's not just Catholics who love this guy - the rest of us also like him just fine.

This year Pope Francis is on a climate change crusade to drive out the carbon demons that have crawled up the ass of Harper and company.  Steve can't duck this one.  His permanently coiffed hair is the telltale sign of demonic possession.

According to The Guardian, Francis is going to issue a Papal edict on climate change, a call to arms to the world's 1.2-billion Catholics.

"...can Francis achieve a feat that has so far eluded secular powers and inspire decisive action on climate change?

"It looks as if he will give it a go.  In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world's main religions."

What's that, a "summit of the world's main religions"?  Francis is planning on uniting not only Christendom but also the Muslims, Hindus, and  Buddhists behind climate change and squarely against our own Steve and the rest of the Carbon Clique.


It'll be the Fossil Fuelers versus God in all his/her iterations.  And among those who'll be hearing the message will be a goodly, God-fearing chunk of Canada's electorate.  Oh my, my.  Talk about Divine Intervention.

Given Pope Francis' already impressive batting average, it doesn't look good for Sideshow Steve and his Carbon Demons.  You might say the Vatican is planning to give him a high colonic exorcism.

Update:

Fanciful as this might seem, a bit of Google research turned up some interesting facts.  Roman Catholicism is the given religion of 38.7% of Canadians which is about the same as the percentage of votes cast in the last election that handed Harper his majority.  Canada's progressive Protestant churches make up another 15-20% of the population.  You can pretty much count on those Protestant churches to support the pope on climate change.  Even Harper knows not to expect much support from the fact-based outlook of the non-religious.

I think it's certainly possible that a good, climate-change nudge from the nation's pulpits could cost Harper his crown.  Watch for the CRA to crack down on our churches.