Harrison Ford Is Han Solo.

When I looked at the wreckage of the Ryan PT-22 my first thought was, "wow, they should be able to rebuild that."  After that I got that good feeling from knowing that pilot Harrison Ford found himself at a point where he had to make a very difficult decision and, unlike many before him, made the right call.

In the immediate wake of the crash there was no information on the cause but a look at the photo left no doubt it was engine failure on take off.  One of the first lessons drummed into the brains of every student pilot is how to respond to this very situation.  They're taught to resist the impulse to do a 180 and land on the runway they just left and, instead, look for some place more or less to the front to put the plane down.

The tower tape reveals that Ford, on declaring his engine out emergency, initially thought about a go around.  That entails making a sharp turn at slow speed with no power.  The usual result is a differential stall because the inside wing is going so much slower than the other and it loses lift.  One side of the airplane still wants to fly after the other side has quit for the day.

But Ford didn't stall.  Instead he spotted an opening on a golf course and was able to make a wings level deadstick landing.  Both wings stayed on the plane. The fuselage and tail are largely intact.  Han Solo, meanwhile, lived to fly another day.

Pretty sweet.

Fighting Fear With Even More Fear

Fear is a weapon.  It's a weapon of choice of modern terrorists.  Not for nothing are they named "terrorists."  They seek to use fear to manipulate a result.  It's a despicable, heinous thing to do - deserving of nothing but our contempt.

Fear is also a weapon of choice of the Harper government.  They too regularly inflict fear on the Canadian people to manipulate a result they could not hope to achieve by legitimate, democratic means.  It's a despicable, heinous thing to do and those who attack the Canadian people with fear and those who support their efforts are deserving of nothing but our contempt.

TorStar columnist, Ed Keenan, tears a strip off the Harper government for fearmongering to sell Bill C-51:

“Jihadi terrorists have declared war on Canada,” a Conservative party fundraising email sent out this week reads. “They hate us for our values. They hate us because we love freedom and tolerance.”

On occasion, the Conservative government headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper has shown an inclination to take on the role of the press — by producing and distributing its own approved news items to print and broadcast media through the PR agency News Canada Ltd., for example. It now appears it has decided to do the work of satirists, too. How else to explain the transparent layers of irony running through the Conservatives’ public communications, the ham-fisted illustrations of doublespeak that so effectively lay bare the cynical, hollow heart and totalitarian inclinations of their new legislation?

...“They hate us because we love freedom and tolerance.”

See, the devastating self-skewering element of this line is that it is nominally intended to serve as the justification for a proposed law, Bill C-51, that will restrict freedom. And it is offered at a time when members of the government are using the bill as a means ofwhipping up intolerance against Muslims to score cheap political points. Here we have a piece of legislation that would, among other things, curtail freedom of speech fairly broadly on matters related to terrorism and give an espionage agency domestic policing powers that allow it, in secret, to be specifically exempted from honouring the Charter of Rights.

An extra-constitutional secret police and surveillance agency, and criminal penalties for expressions of dissent. If “we love freedom and tolerance” isn’t the perfect punchline to explain that, what is?

Apologists for Justin Trudeau (who must, by now, be nearing exhaustion) contend the Liberals are supporting C-51 lest Harper turn it into an excuse to call a snap election.  Really? And they want us to believe Team Trudeau is fit to govern our country?  Cue the ghost of Michael Ignatieff.  

No, sorry JT, you don't get a pass for backing up Harper on this one.  The assault on our democratic freedoms, especially our right to dissent, embodied in C-51, is your assault as much as Harpers on this one.

Meanwhile, in this morning's Times Colonist, Star Phoenix columnist Paul Hanley slams Canada's Petro-Police, the RCMP:

The RCMP’s recently disclosed Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Assessment of Criminal Threats to the Canadian Petroleum Industry might be dismissed as a joke if its implications weren’t so disturbing.

Given the sweeping nature of proposed anti-terrorism legislation, what does this assessment reveal of attitudes about the environmental movement inside government?

The RCMP assessment lists several incidents of criminal activity directed at the petroleum industry. Fair enough. We all likely agree those involved in actual crimes, such as bombings and threats of violence, should be prosecuted.

But the police force then launches into a pro-petroleum polemic that tars the “broadly based anti-petroleum opposition” — hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Canadians — with the same brush as it does a handful of violent criminals.

The RCMP’s assumption that it’s somehow “anti-Canadian” to oppose the expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure is simply wrong. It is also wrong that Canada’s police force should indulge in an ideologically based critique of a legitimate social movement. Its job is to enforce laws, not take ideological positions.

Beyond that, the report is rubbish. Its assessment of risk is not based on an investigation of actual threats but on comments from dubious media and industry sources. If this is what passes as “intelligence,” it makes one question the RCMP’s capacity to judge any threat.

The RCMP makes much of a report from an academic source about the nefarious use of social media by environmental groups to “dominate” the Internet and “recruit impressionable students” to “help save the planet.” How shocking!

How stupid can this thing get? Well, the RCMP goes on to cite a paper from a university student who made the startling discovery that Twitter is being used to mobilize people. That finding leads to this revelation: “Environmentalists are no longer confined to simply waving banners and yelling through megaphones: They have gone online.”

We actually pay people to churn out this nonsense?

It's pretty obvious that Paulson's Petro-Cops are desperate for some pretext, seemingly anything no matter how contrived, to support their sick ideological bent against Canadians concerned about the devastation of our and the world's environment.  They've taken sides and it has precious little or nothing to do with law and order.

The Royal Conservative Mounted Petro-Police.  Isn't it time to just get rid of them?

Russia, Ukraine, the West - It's Close to Out of Hand

We're Backing These Guys

If we don't want another Cold War or, worse, a full-blown shooting war with Russia (and quite possibly China to boot) it's on us to stop treating them like we're already enemies.

Russia expert, University of Kent professor, Richard Sakwa, has added his voice to the chorus arguing that the debacle in Ukraine is the inevitable result of the West's - and especially America's - policies over the past 30 years since G.H.W. Bush and Gorbachev ended Cold War I.

Sakwa maintains it was the United States, fearful of suffering economically, that subverted efforts for an economic and political reconciliation between the EU and Russia.

...despite the shocking assassination under the Kremlin walls of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, despite ever more evidence of Russia's complicity in and support for the conflict tearing Ukraine apart, Sakwa insists the West must take a step back and reassess its language and strategy since Malta – before it's too late.

"Ultimately Russia as a great power, a nuclear power, has to be listened to. Not to say 'it's right', not to say to 'give in', but at least to say 'OK, what are the issues' instead of simply demonising them. The triumphalism has to come to an end."

In his new book, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, Sakwa sketches out his theme: that by assuming that Russia was beaten, by ignoring its needs and its nature and by pushing NATO's borders closer and closer to Moscow, Europe and the US created the conditions for the current civil war in Ukraine.

They have put Europe and Russia into a destructive, escalating cycle of mistrust and aggression in which neither side is entirely to blame, yet both consider themselves blameless. "The atmosphere in Moscow, some of the hardliners, even the old liberals and academics, they're [saying] 'let's just solve it and march all the way to Kiev'," Sakwa told Fairfax Media. "They're so angry, they feel so betrayed by the West. It's very dangerous.

"We are doomed to . . . another 25 years of cold war, probably more dangerous than the first Cold War, which could end up in a 1914 situation because the West simply will not listen to Russia's concerns."

Sakwa's book has already caught attention. Retired NATO intelligence analyst Martin Packard wrote that it was the first "realistic synopsis of the background to current events".

"The intention in Moscow [in 1986] was to . . . achieve a progressive convergence with the EU," he wrote. "There could have been huge benefits to Europe in such convergence, but the process was deliberately sabotaged by US intelligence agencies, working from the hypothesis that a tie-up between the EU and a democratic Russia would pose a major threat to American long-term economic interests."

 "The chaos that we now have, and the distrust of America which motivates Russian policy, stems primarily from decisions taken in Washington 30 years ago."

Sakwa warns the West must be careful not to get caught in its own hypocrisy.

"It's 450 kilometres from the Ukrainian border to Moscow," Sakwa says. "If [NATO] really do believe in sovereignty, then I shall phone Raul Castro tomorrow and say 'all is forgiven, we made a mistake, you as a sovereign state have the right to put nuclear missiles onto Cuba'."

Over the last decade Russia became increasingly alienated. Vladimir Putin took power as a "new realist" seeking to engage with and accommodate the West. But after 2007 he and Russia became more assertive, Sakwa writes, buoyed by the country's economic recovery and unable to form genuine partnerships with the EU. Putin began to attack the US for trying to establish a "unipolar world . . . in which there is one master, one sovereign", and called the enlargement of NATO "a serious provocation".

Sakwa argues there's only one way out of this - a new deal with Russia, one not immersed in American triumphalism.

Russia simply cannot allow NATO to get a toehold in Ukraine, Sakwa says. NATO is a body "which by its very existence betrays the aspirations to have ended the Cold War with an equitable and inclusive peace". And as Russia becomes more anti-NATO, NATO becomes more wary of Russia.

"NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence," Sakwa argues in the book.

"We are in the logic of 1914, we are in an escalatory logic," he told Fairfax Media. "The idea of Russian troops marching into the Baltic states until a few months ago was absolutely absurd. Today it becomes more and more likely. The more they want proof of NATO's security, the less security they get. We've gone too far."

So what to do? Talk, says Sakwa: "For 20 years we've been living in a fool's paradise. After the end of the Cold War we ultimately fundamentally failed to establish an inclusive and satisfactory peace on the European continent.

"Ultimately there has to be a new Helsinki, a new Yalta, a new Malta."

And this time we have to get it right, he says.

Jimbo Prentice Pokes Albertans in the Eye With a Sharp Stick.

Well, this is certain something.  Alberta's unelected premier, Jim Prentice, better learn to bite his tongue.

Prentice has sparked a bit of a furor by blaming his constituents for the mess the province now finds itself in.

Premier Jim Prentice is facing a social media backlash after telling Albertans to "look in the mirror" to find who is responsible for the province's current financial woes.

Speaking on CBC's Alberta@Noon Wednesday, Premier Jim Prentice told host Donna McElligott that "in terms of who is responsible, we need only look in the mirror. Basically, all of us have had the best of everything and have not had to pay for what it costs."

Well, sure Jim, that's right - in part at least but only in part.  It was your own government that allowed the Big Energy gorilla to ass rape the province.  And it was your own government that decided it was a fine idea to depend on petro-royalties to fund its budget outlays.  

Your government didn't do those things because they were good for the province or for the people of Alberta, current and future.  Your government squandered your energy revenues like a piss-drunk sailor in order to buy your way through election after election with faux prosperity for - well, forever.

You knew better.  The last sentient premier that despoiled province had warned you.  Peter Lougheed drew you a map through the energy minefield, showing you how to use it as a bounty, not a curse.  Peter Lougheed was not only the last intelligent premier, he was also the last honest premier Alberta has known.  And, by trying to shirk the blame for your government's own policies, you're showing that its business as usual under your management.

Coming Soon, the Great Warming Spurt.

You may have never heard of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) or, as its sometimes called, the Pacific multi-decadal oscillation.  Before long that will change.

There have been references to it here and there but it wasn't until this article was posted at Climate Central on the 27th of last month that I finally spent a bit of time exploring it.

You've probably heard of ENSO, the El Nino Southern Oscillation that brings us El Nino or La Nina conditions every seven years or so.  PDO is something like ENSO on steroids and for the past 15-years it's been sucking heat out of the atmosphere and burying it in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.  That, apparently, is soon to change.

Humanity is about to experience a historically unprecedented spike in temperatures.

That’s the ominous conclusion of a vast and growing body of research that links sweeping Pacific Ocean cycles with rates of warming at the planet’s surface — warming rates that could affect how communities and nations respond to threats posed by climate change.

Papers in two leading journals this week reaffirmed that the warming effects of a substantial chunk of our greenhouse gas pollution have been avoided on land for the last 15 to 20 years because of a phase in a decades-long cycle of ocean winds and currents. With Pacific trade winds expected to slacken in the years ahead, the studies warn that seas will begin absorbing less of global warming’s energy, and that some of the heat they’ve been holding onto will rise to the surface.

You see, for the past two decades we've sort of been running a tab on the extra heat generated by our growing greenhouse gas emissions.  That heat didn't go away, PDO merely stored it in the ocean.  Because that heat got sucked underwater we didn't notice how much we were actually warming the planet. But just as an ocean can absorb heat from the atmosphere so too can a warmed ocean release heat back into the atmosphere.  

Amid the questions left unanswered by the research, however, are whether communities are prepared for looming assaults of increasingly intense heat waves after the warming slowdown reverses, and how the expected spikes in surface temperatures could affect policy debates dealing with climate action and clean energy.

"A future speedup in warming is likely to affect public opinion about climate change if it results in changes at the local level that people recognize," Utah State University assistant professor Peter Howe, who has researched public perceptions of climate change, said. "I would also caution, though, that perceptions and experiences of local climate conditions appear to be related to some extent by pre-existing beliefs about global warming."

Along with rising tides caused by rising temperatures, intense heat and heat waves are the clearest signs so far that human activity is altering the climate. A suite of modeling studies have independently concluded that heat waves that ravaged Australia in 2013 would have been almost impossible without the warming effects of our greenhouse gas pollution. Scientists have also directly linked record-breaking heat in Europe with global warming.

Meanwhile, California’s record-breaking heat last year, which some research links more closely with ocean cycles than with global warming, substantially worsened the drought-inducing effects of low rainfall and snowfall rates. That’s a problem that will continue to worsen fire risks throughout the American West, and much of the rest of the world, as temperatures start to really spike. That could threaten the survival of entire ecosystems,including the spectacular high-altitude forests of the American Southwest.

This concern dovetails with recent research finding that our oceans' capacity to absorb atmospheric heat has peaked and is waning.  The oceanic heat sink that we've so relied upon may be less reliable than we had hoped.

So, brace yourselves.  The heating spike may be up to 5-years off which provides some opportunity to do things such as heat-proofing the house or going for that heat pump option.

Duffy's Sting

It's a tale with two scripts.  One is the story presented by Stephen Harper, his PMO, the RCMP and others.  The other is the account presented by disgraced senator Mike Duffy.  At least one side isn't telling the truth.

Who to believe?  We'll have to wait until all the evidence is in but I figure the truth has come, quite inadvertently, from senator Duffy.

There is one piece of evidence, the unintended disclosure of which, set this whole business in motion.  It's an e-mail - candid, descriptive and, most importantly, contemporaneous with the events.  When Duffy circulated the e-mail to his confidantes he believed, quite mistakenly, that they would hold it in confidence.  That's what confidantes do, isn't it?  Only somehow it wound up in the hands of CTV reporter, Bob Fife, and the rest is history.

The e-mail describes the events that we now know occured.  Duffy, perhaps boastfully, wrote that a deal was in place to make his Senate expenses problem go away.  He described four elements.  He would be given the money to cover his Senate tab.  He was to use that money to cut his own cheque for repayment. In exchange he was to say nothing further publicly and he was to stop co-operating with the audit team appointed by the Senate. He added that, as part of the deal he was also promised that the Senate audit report would "go easy on me."

It was a deal intended to continue Duffy's role as fundraiser for the Harper Conservatives.  Get Duffy off the hook and get him back out on the road where he was worth his considerable weight in campaign cheques.  The guy was an engine for the Tories.  They would point him in the right direction and hand him a ticket.  He'd show up, press the flesh, and collect the money.

It was because Duffy spent so much time on the road, fundraising for the Prince of Darkness, that he narrowly failed to meet the residency requirement that landed him in hot water in the first place.  He couldn't be in Prince Edward Island when he was in Calgary or Moncton or Nunavit.  Without being in PEI for the requisite number of days he wasn't entitled to claim a living expense allowance.

Back to the scandal.  The timing of that ill-fated e-mail is everything.  It happened contemporaneously with the events described.  Duffy said the Senate audit report would go easy on him and it subsequently did when it was laundered by Tory senators Carolyn Stewart-Olsen and David Tkachuk.

It's this promise, allegedly with Harper's knowledge, that constitutes the bribery that the RCMP, so conservatively chooses to ignore.  That was Harper or his very closest aides promising to intervene with, corrupt if you like, the Senate audit process to procure a favourable result for the Senator from Prince Edward Island.  When it comes to that the only conclusion is that the RCMP is choosing to look the other way.  Why?  That's easy.  Where does it lead?

The RCMP has to ignore the audit fixing element for it to justify not charging the principals to the deal - Nigel Wright, Benjamin Perrin, perhaps Harper himself. They've already said that Duffy is to be condemned for accepting a bribe but the people plainly involved in offering and facilitating that bribe - two of them lawyers - are not culpable of any criminal wrongdoing.

A bribe is many things but it's not unilateral.  It requires an offer or demand and acceptance, and the transmission of the bribe from one person, the giver, to another person, the recipient.

It's quite believable that Duffy did resist repaying the housing allowance.  He felt the party was responsible for keeping him on the non-stop. cross-Canada fundraising campaign that prevented him from logging enough days in PEI to meet the requirements.  Long before the expense issue even arose a mutual friend would tell me he worried about the strain that Duffy's party exertions might be taking on the senator's wonky heart.

Wright, Perrin, Harper and others have already made statements that stand to be weighed against that all-important e-mail, the one that wound up in Fife's hands. They tell a considerably different story, that doesn't match Duffy's account.  As I recall it, Perrin, Harper's personal in-house lawyer, at one point said he wasn't involved at all and yet it seems it was Perrin who effected the delivery of Wright's cheque to Duffy's then solicitor.

The Conservatives clearly hope the Duffy trial will put an end to this matter.  It might be just the beginning.

A Taste of Far Worse Things to Come? Port Metro Vancouver Fire.

It's a scary feeling.  You glance out your office window overlooking the Port Metro Vancouver docks to see thick clouds of white smoke billowing your way.

That's what happened to my prospective son-in-law yesterday at his computer animation shop in a gentrified, former industrial building hard alongside the docks, right by the cranes.  He made a number of trips in his car ferrying his colleagues a safe distance from the fires.

They didn't know what it was, only that it was acrid and they wanted to get away as quickly as they could.  Vancouver Police phone lines were jammed so off they went.

They were lucky.  The container load of trichloroisocyanuric acid, while volatile and flammable, wasn't lethal.  Those exposed mainly sustained burning eyes and throats.  And they could see and smell the smoke.

This is nothing compared to what could lie in store if when a supertanker full of dilbit goes down in the treacherous Second Narrows, spilling its cargo into Burrard Inlet or Coal Harbour.  Experts warn that the diluent, mixed into the bitumen, would separate and rise to the surface where it would form into very toxic clouds of invisible and generally undetectable gas.  Undetectable, that is, until someone breathes it.  Then the people of Vancouver and the North Shore would have a real disaster on their hands.

Aviation Week Pays Homage to the Avro Arrow

Few people today know much about Canada's legendary foray into aviation high tech - the Avro Arrow that rolled out of the Avro Canada Malton plant in October, 1957.  Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman revisits that bittersweet moment in Canadian aviation that ended when the Arrow was put to the cutting torch by the conservative government of John Diefenbaker just two years later.


When Aviation Week reported on the fighter's rollout, in October 1957, the magazine called it "a serious contender for the top military aircraft of the next several years". High praise indeed, for a non-U.S. aircraft, given that the XB-58 supersonic bomber was in flight test and that new aircraft in the works included the A-5 Vigilante and the F-4 Phantom.

But the Arrow was extraordinary, and more so, given that the industry that produced it was less than a decade old when the prototype contract was issued in March 1955. Avro Canada had been formed by Britain's Hawker Siddeley Group after World War 2 and had quickly produced the CF-100 interceptor, the C-102 jet airliner (the world's second to fly), and the CF-100's Orenda engine, which was also fitted to Canadian-built Sabre fighters.

The CF-105 was a different kettle of fish entirely, designed to shoot down Soviet jet bombers over the Arctic, long before shorter-legged U.S. interceptors could touch them. Key requirements were a big radar, large missile load, long range and high speed, and agility at high speed and altitude. Translated: get out a long way quickly and accomplish multiple engagements before returning to refuel.

Chief designer Jim Floyd and his team produced a unique configuration, detailed in a 1958 lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society. The delta wing was chosen for supersonic efficiency, and had a cambered and notched leading edge for better maneuverability. It was mounted on top of the fuselage (at the price of a complex landing gear) to gain the benefits of a continuous tip-to-tip structure and a simple fuselage design, with straight inlet ducts, easy engine access, and a large weapon bay. The missile bay was a drop-down pallet, offering the potential of interchangeable units for other missions.

The performance requirements meant that almost everything on the airplane had to be invented. No existing engine would do the job, so Avro spun off a new Orenda Engines subsidiary to produce the Iroquois, the most powerful supersonic engine of the 1950s. The airframe took Canada into the world of integrally machined skins, and both airframe and engine used titanium. The CF-105 was the first aircraft to use 4,000 psi hydraulics. Canada enlisted Hughes for help with the radar and missiles, but the radar was new and the missile was the active-homing Sparrow II. Management was a huge challenge, both because the aircraft was complex (the second-biggest Mach 2 airplane anywhere) and because of the program's sheer size: at its peak, Avro Canada was the nation's third-largest company and in the world Top 100.

Technically, it went quite well. The first four Arrows proved fast, even with interim J75 engines that delivered only three-quarters of the Iroquois' thrust: on the seventh test flight, the first CF-105 accelerated through 1,000 mph in a climb at 50,000 feet. By early 1959, the first Iroquois-powered Mk2 was in taxi tests.

Politically, the story was different. A new Progressive Conservative government had been elected in March 1957, sworn to rein in government spending. ...On February 20, 1959, prime minister John Diefenbaker announced the cancellation of the CF-105, and within two months almost all the hardware in the program had been destroyed and nearly 30,000 jobs eliminated.

The Arrow lived on in legend. Diefenbaker had scrapped the project under direct orders from Washington, which saw it as a threat to the U.S. industry. One of the prototypes had been spirited away before the wrecking crews arrived, and was hidden in Canada or in secret tests in the United States. The Arrow has been the subject of more books and movies than many successful projects. As recently as 2012, the Canadian government -- bumbling its way through another fighter procurement -- was forced to deny that a neo-Arrow was a candidate to replace the F/A-18.

Would it have worked? The late Bill Gunston, technical editor of Flight in the 1950s and a shrewd reader of programs, believed that it would have done, particularly with British support (and the existence of Typhoon today shows how wrong the British government was in 1957). Even with the Soviet Union's backing away from strategic bombers in favor of missiles, the Arrow would have been very useful in Western Europe for defense against Tu-22M regional bombers. But none of that, unfortunately, was foreseen in 1959.

► Read the article from the October 21, 1957 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology:

CF-105 Displays Advanced Engineering (part 1)

CF-105 Displays Advanced Engineering (part 2)

It bears remembering that, today, it's the grandchildren of the Conservative peckerheads who killed off the Arrow and replaced it, bait and switch style, with Bomarc missiles, who are about to saddle the RCAF with the overpriced, overdue and underperforming F-35. I guess there are some things that are just in the blood.

Gwynne Dyer - Iran's Nuclear Bomb Programme Was Never About Israel.

It would be the height of suicidal folly for Iran to ever threaten Israel with a nuclear attack.  Israel has at least 80-nuclear warheads, possibly hundreds, far more than enough to turn Iran into glass.

Gwynne Dyer brings a breath of reality to the situation with Iran today pointing out that, not only does Iran have no current nuclear weapons programme, back when it did it was never about Israel.

There were two periods during which Iran seriously considered making nuclear weapons and did some preliminary work on weapons design and uranium enrichment, but in neither case was it about Israel.

The first time was in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked Iran (with American backing) in a war that ultimately cost a quarter-million Iranian lives. At that time Saddam actually was working on Iraqi nuclear weapons, and Iran felt obliged to follow suit.

But after Saddam was defeated by Western and Arab armies in the Gulf War of 1990-91 and the United Nations inspectors went in to dismantle Iraq’s nuclear programme, the Iranians lost interest in developing their own nuclear weapons. Then they got alarmed again and restarted the programme in 1998 when another neighbour, Pakistan, tested its own first nuclear weapons.

They didn’t make much progress, but they kept on working at the problem in a desultory way until 2002, when an anti-regime terrorist group called Mujahedin-e-Khalq (partly financed by Israel) revealed the existence of the weapons programme and Tehran shut it down. And for the past 13 years, nothing.

The Ad CBC Won't Air - Quelle Surprise!

It's HarperLand 2015 which goes a long way to explaining why CBC has refused to run this ad.

What America's Military Leviathan Desperately Needs - Mo Money.

It already consumes more money than the next dozen or so largest militaries on Earth but it's not enough, not nearly enough.

According to the rightwing Heritage Foundation, the Pentagon needs mo money, a lot more.

The consistent decline in funding and the consequent shrinking of the force are putting it under significant pressure. Essential maintenance is being deferred; fewer units (mostly the Navy’s platforms and the Special Operations Forces community) are being cycled through operational deployments more often and for longer periods; and old equipment is being extended while programmed replacements are problematic. The cumulative effect of such factors has resulted in a U.S. military that is marginally able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.

It's an interesting enough, albeit predictable, report.  It's based on America's ability to fight two regional wars simultaneously and has a questionable "All the King's Horses and All the King's Men" approach.

When it comes to American military preparedness, however, I prefer the Maserati analogy offered by Janine Davidson, senior fellow at Defense in Depth.

Imagine a gorgeous, gleaming Maserati, the sort of car that belongs on a showroom floor. The car is elegant, but it’s also extraordinarily capable—the Maserati GranTurismo goes 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds and tops out at 186 miles per hour. What do you do with a machine like this? You certainly don’t use it for your commute on the pot-holed roads or your grocery runs or all the other mundanities of daily life. Instead, the Maserati is to be reserved for only the most special occasions. Otherwise, you keep it in an air conditioned garage, to be admired from a polite distance.

Too often, planners and policymakers apply this same sort of thinking to the U.S. military. They think that the primary—indeed, the only—mission of the United States’ armed forces is to “fight and win the nation’s wars.” These wars, so often assumed to be quick, high-tech and decisive conflicts waged against a peer competitor, demand the most expensive force possible, armed with the most “exquisite” platforms that the nation can produce. When not called on to fight these decisive conflicts, the military, like the Maserati, should be preserved and protected in its enclosed garage.

There are two problems here. The first is that the vast majority of contingencies the U.S. military is called on to perform are not quick, decisive, one-versus-one “football games” where one side wins, the other loses, and they both pack up and go home. Instead, the United States most typically deploys its forces for peacekeeping, stability operations, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, mass atrocity prevention, drug interdiction, and more. U.S. foreign policy demands a wide range of options and mission sets; it’s the military that makes these happen.

The second problem is that these expensive, “exquisite,” platforms are not the best-suited for what we do most. Even if an F-35 can outfly and outshoot everything in the sky, or a Zumwalt-class destroyer can dominate a huge ocean stretch, we will never be able to build very many of them. Trading this much capacity for capability may not make sense when, for most missions, a lot of the older stuff works pretty darn well. The American military need not be a shiny Maserati. Most of the time it can be a Ford F-150: worn, reliable, and more than able to get the job done.

Indeed the F-35 is a military Maserati.  It's designed to do a very narrow range of things better than others (although even that is in doubt today) but it sacrifices an incredible degree of capability for the sake of stealth cloaking.  The Maserati is great but not when you need to move a cord of firewood.

There's a price to be paid for this sort of extravagance.  In the graphic above you can see the size of China's military expenditure contrasted with America's.  What that graph won't show you is how much more bang China gets for its military buck - and it's a lot.  

Canada may desperately want to be admitted to America's entourage, its posse, but with that comes pressure to field Maseratis when we really need those Ford F-150 pickups.  America can, and will, squander hundreds of billions of dollars on its supercar military.  Canada, with our defence budget choked almost into unconsciousness by Stephen Harper, can't afford to go that route.  

China Tells U.S. to Back Off over Ukraine

The message was delivered by China's ambassador to Belgium, Qu Xing, but it pretty obviously came straight from Beijing - back off Obama.  Ambassador Qu went on to blame the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on 'games' played by the West, especially the United States.

He said the "nature and root cause" of the crisis was the "game" between Russia and Western powers, including the United States and the European Union.

He said external intervention by different powers accelerated the crisis and warned that Moscow would feel it was being treated unfairly if the West did not change its approach.

"The West should abandon the zero-sum mentality, and take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration," Qu was quoted as saying.

His comments were an unusually public show of understanding from China for the Russian position. China and Russia see eye-to-eye on many international diplomatic issues but Beijing has generally not been so willing to back Russia over Ukraine.

The Rise and Fall of America's Indispensable Ally - Israel

Israel has always been America's indispensable ally in the Middle East.  That may be changing.  Benjamin Netanyahu's speech yesterday to the US Congress might have been less of a bold stroke and more an act of desperation.

The Sydney Morning Herald's international affairs columnist, Paul McGeough, writes that Israel's influence with Washington is in decline even as Netanyahu's object of terror, Iran, sees its fortunes rising.  In other words, there's more than the supposed threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb driving Netanyahu's crusade for an American war on Iran.

Washington's place in the world – and in the region – is very different. The Cold War is gone and the grind of nuclear tension with Moscow is so yesterday. Obama wants to pivot to Asia.

US and world dependence on Arab fossil fuel is not what it was and most of the Arab regimes have become trusted allies of the West – especially in the context of the crisis brought on by the so-called Islamic State. All are allowed to get on with their human rights abuse excesses, they are sold weapons worth billions and that thing called the Middle East peace process goes precisely nowhere – and nobody seems to mind.

...The neo-con argument as the US prepared for the invasion of Iraq was that democracy would finally be planted in the region. And when Netanyahu spoke to Congress at that time, he declared: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region."

Instead, Iran was planted in Iraq; and the impotence of the Sunni regimes was revealed, creating a vacuum in which Sunni jihadists challenged the entire nation-state model of governance, on which the West so relies in the region.

Now we've come full circle. The extent of Washington's crisis with the Sunnis repositions Iran more as part of the solution and less as part of the problem. And where Washington needs circuit-breakers right now, Iran has heft; Israel doesn't.

The threat to regional stability now is the conflict within Sunni Islam more than it is Sunni v Shiite or Islam v West.

Writing in Foreign Policy last year, analyst Trita Parsi observed: "Iraq is disintegrating. Syria is in flames. Pakistan is on the verge of becoming a failed state. The Taliban is making a comeback in Afghanistan. Libya is falling apart. The House of Saud is nervous about a potentially existential succession crisis. In this region Iran looks like an island of stability."

He makes his point – "meanwhile, the geopolitical enmity that has characterised relations between the US and Iran for more than three decades, now has been overtaken by events in Iraq and elsewhere".

This is the context in which Washington and Tehran need each other – but they will not achieve that until they get to the other side of a nuclear deal.

The language of Barack Obama and a growing army of officials and analysts now acknowledges Iran as a potential partner.

...Amidst all this regional change, the reality of Israel too is changing – in itself and in its relations with the world.

Netanyahu harks back to Washington's role as the first to recognise the new state of Israel in 1948. Recalling a small country with a huge and convincing argument, The Washington Post's Richard Cohen observes: "[Netanyahu] harkens back not only to a different America, but also to a different Israel – [in 1948] it was not yet an occupation power; it did not mistreat the Palestinians."

And in the context of what Washington needs in the region, as opposed to what the US might like or admire, Cohen adds: "The fact is that the US doesn't need Israel."

The Real Threat Facing Israel

No one expected Benjamin Netanyahu to win the gushing approval of the editorial board of Israel's liberal newspaper Haaretz but they were decidedly unimpressed by their prime minister's speech to part of the US Congress yesterday.  Their view is that Netanyahu deliberately avoided any mention of the real existential threat to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state - the ever expanding occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Israel’s insistence on ruling over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank who lack civil rights, expanding the settlements and keeping residents of the Gaza Strip under siege is the danger that threatens its future.

Israel is mortgaging its national resources to maintain a dual regime of democracy for Jews and apartheid for Palestinians. But the illusion that the occupation is comfortable and quiet, and that most Israelis are isolated from it, is fated to explode.

In recent years, during which relative security quiet prevailed in the West Bank, Israel embarked on three wars in Gaza that killed thousands of Palestinian civilians – solely in order to maintain the status quo. These periodic “operations,” along with the cessation of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, have left a moral stain on the Israel Defense Forces, and on the statesmen who sent them into Gaza and on policing missions in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron.

Calls for boycotting Israel and recognizing Palestine even without an agreement have moved from the political fringes to center stage in the West. Instead of the Palestinians giving up their national aspirations, Israel is being forced to contend with claims that Zionism and democracy are mutually exclusive.

...Internal tensions between Jews and Arabs have risen, and right-wing parties have vied among themselves in pushing anti-democratic laws designed to institutionalize discrimination against the minority and deprive it of the right of political expression. While Netanyahu was planning his speech in Washington, right-wing thugs attacked MK Haneen Zoabi at a political conference in Ramat Gan. This was the natural continuation of the nation-state bill and the attempts to oust Zoabi and her colleagues from the Knesset, and more proof that democracy has trouble flourishing or even functioning alongside apartheid and military occupation.

Here's Something You Probably Don't Think About Very Much. How Much Antibiotic Is In Your Fast Food Chicken?

This is one of those stories that's just a bit cringe-worthy.  McDonald's is changing its policy about the sort of chicken it will drop in your lap at the drive-thru.

Over the next two years, McDonald's will require its suppliers to phase out antibiotics that are "important to human medicine."

Veterinary use of antibiotics is legal. However, as the rate of human infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria increases, consumer advocates and public health experts have become more critical of the practice of routinely feeding antibiotics to chickens, cattle and pigs.

Scientists and public health experts say whenever an antibiotic is administered, it kills weaker bacteria and can enable the strongest to survive and multiply. 

Frequent use of low-dose antibiotics, a practice used by some meat producers, can intensify that effect. The risk, they say, is that so-called superbugs might develop cross-resistance to critical, medically important antibiotics.

Superbugs are linked to an estimated 23,000 human deaths and 2 million illnesses every year in the United States, and up to $20 billion in direct healthcare costs, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Obviously anything that reduces the prospect of antibiotic-resistant superbugs in fast-food chicken is a good thing, as far as it goes.  But they'll be replacing one antibiotic with another which means we'll still be on the receiving end of a food industry whose practices are such that their critters will croak if they're not laced with antibiotics.  It's the same story with industrial cattle production in feed lots. The only way to keep those animals from infecting and killing off each other is to keep them medicated all the way to the abattoir.  

The Path of Self-Destruction. Consumerism.

We, mankind, have to change our ways or else perish.  It's that cut and dried. We're confronted with a number of existential threats.  Our continued existence is imperiled by three main factors - climate change, overpopulation and over-consumption.

We are living well outside the limits of our survivability.  We have passed the threshhold of sustainability and crossed over into the perilous realm of survivability.

Our consumptive habits endanger us every bit as much as the future ravages of climate change.  While we are just one of millions of life forms that share this planet, we, mankind, already consume more than 1.5 times the supply of our planet's renewable resources.

When we're taking 150% of our planet's resource carrying capacity what does that leave for all those other life forms?  Precious little which is a main reason why we have lost half the life on our planet over just the last 30-years.  That revelation came and went and was flushed straight down the news hole by week's end.  For most of us it's all but forgotten already.

Not only are we devouring 150% of our planet's resource carrying capacity but we're dependent on it.  Mankind has grown mortally dependent on something that simply doesn't exist and never will.  We have been deluding ourselves by conjuring tricks, by having at our planet's dwindling reserves.  We've been clearing our forests, draining our aquifers, exhausting our farmland and wiping out our fisheries - all to keep production and consumption at what have become unsurvivable levels.  This does not end well.

This came to mind as I read report today about a German government study on our electronics buying habits.  The study found that the usable life span of electronics products is getting shorter.

The environment agency asked Öko-Institut researchers to examine consumers’ reasons for replacing electrical and electronic appliances with a view to establishing whether manufacturers are purposefully shortening product life spans to prop up sales, a phenomenon known as built-in obsolescence.

The researchers did not draw a firm conclusion on built-in obsolescence but noted that the proportion of all units sold to replace a defective appliance grew from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012, in what they deemed a “remarkable” increase.

And the share of large household appliances that had to be replaced within the first five years of use grew from 7% of total replacements in 2004 to 13% in 2013. This too was largely due to an increase in the proportion of recently purchased appliances replaced following a defect, which may point to an obsolescence problem.

However consumer preference is also playing a role. A third of all replacement purchases for products such as refrigerators and washing machines were motivated by a desire for a better unit while the old one was still functioning.

Consumers are also increasingly keen to swap their flat screen televisions for better versions with larger screens and better picture quality, even though more than 60% of replaced televisions were still functioning in 2012.

Policymakers are increasingly concerned about inefficient use of resources in resource-poor Europe, and about the environmental impact of this. The EU is looking to regulate product resource efficiency by including new standards such as durability and repairability in requirements under the Ecodesign Directive, a law that is currently focused on energy efficiency for the most part.
An integral element in the school of Steady State economics is the regulation, rationing if you like, of access to resources.  Instead of resources going to the highest bidder, resources would be allocated according to the utility and enjoyment of the product to be manufactured.  The longevity of service life and the ability to upgrade the product would be critical. The idea, for example, envisions home computers that would last at least five, six or more times longer than the junk that amasses at our recycling yards today.

Growth, the misunderstood curse of our modern life, would likewise be transformed.  Instead of growth in production and consumption, growth would focus on knowledge and development needed to make life more comfortable and enjoyable.

A third element of Steady State economics is population stability by which birth rates are kept in line with death rates and overall population levels well within the planet's carrying capacity with regard to all the other life forms essential to maintaining all and any life on Earth.

Yet as this German study reveals we're still heading in the wrong direction along the unsurvivable path.  This begs the question whether we'll come to our senses in time.

Finally - My MP Makes the CBC

After 15 very idle years, and mere months before his retirement, my MP, the Conservative member for Nanaimo-Alberni, Doctor (no less) James Lunney has caught the interest of the CBC.

So what great achievement has brought the former chiropractor to the notice of CBC?  You could put it down to his Christian fundmentalism.  Lunney doesn't believe in climate change.  Only God can change the climate.  He doesn't believe in evolution either, although he says he's prepared to acknowledge it as a "theory."  Oh yeah, he also doesn't believe in vaccination.

Lunney dwells in the darkest recesses of the faith based, fundmentalist Right. This probably explains why, with his own party in power for the bottom half of Lunney's political career and even with the incredible paucity of talent in Harper's caucus, Lunney has been left to languish as perhaps the most irrelevant of backbenchers.

Sometimes, while knocking back a brew with fellow constituents, I play a little bar game.  I first ask if they can name our sitting member of Parliament.  Most can get it right, eventually.  Then I ask them to recall the greatest contribution MP Lunney has made to our riding in his 15-year career in Parliament.  Name one thing, just one, for which he'll be remembered. The answer is always the same - a blank stare.

I can't imagine how this joker has held the riding since 2000 but for the loyal support of his fellow Christian fundies and all those rightwing peckerheads from the Prairies who continue to retire here.  Oh that and a low voter turnout.

James Lunney makes it embarrassing to admit you're from his riding.  At least most of the other ridings on the island go NDP.  Unfortunately, when it comes to Nanaimo-Alberni, the Conservatives have demonstrated conclusively that they can get a candidate straight out of the Dark Ages elected again and again.

Here's Lumpy at his finest.  No, he's not a polished speaker either but, then again, he rarely has anything to say.



Oh yeah, not to sell Herr Doktor short, here's another one of his classic moments in the House.

I Feel Your Pain. More Than I Can Say for the CBC.

Oh Mother Corp can be cold, especially when it comes to the cold.  The tag line on the CBC web page read, "Warm Weather for Everyone! (Offer only available in BC.)"

The report links to a Weather Network outlook that sees an early spring for British Columbia (it's already here) but "freeze your butt off" conditions for the rest of Canada through the month of March and perhaps beyond.

Normal temperatures will start returning around mid-April.  Here's what Spring 2015 looks like to the Weather Network:

Sounds Like a Plan to Me. Meet the Burial Pod.

An Italian group has come up with a dandy idea to make good use of you when you're gone - grow a tree.  The deceased is bundled, fetal position, into a biodegradable pod/coffin that is then paired to a tree of choice.  The tree/pod combo is planted/buried and you become nutrients to help the tree grow.

Another idea in the offing in Seattle is a compostitorium.  It consists of a multi-floor conveyor belt.  The body is buried in a quantity of compost and decomposes as the belt slowly moves along.  At the end the enriched compost and bones are crushed up and off they go to a lovely garden somewhere.

Hmm - Fighting Kiddie Porn or Helping Get Harper Re-elected? Decisions, Decisions.

Yes they are indeed the Royal Conservative Mounted Police.  That issue is put to rest by the CBC News report that the RCMP has been withholding millions of dollars earmarked to fight online child pornography in order to help Harper balance the budget in time for the federal election.

Seriously, you can't make this up.

CBC News has learned that over a five-year period, Canada's national police force Mounties withheld some $10 million in funds earmarked for its National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre and related projects, linchpins of the government's anti-child-pornography agenda.

The cuts, made partly as an RCMP contribution to the government's so-called deficit reduction action plan, have occurred even as the number of child-exploitation tips from the public increase exponentially.

The systematic underfunding is highlighted in a draft report prepared for Public Safety Canada, and obtained through the Access to Information Act.

It makes you wonder how much the Hank Paulson clown car trimmed from its budget for providing intelligence and security service to Canada's mainly American energy companies.

The Tories are dismissing criticism, claiming that the unspent money was "an accounting issue."  That's not what the Public Safety Canada report says.


The document, dated November last year, says the RCMP failed to spend its full $8-million annual budget to catch online child abusers throughout the five-year period ending in 2013.

"RCMP expenditures fell short of allocations by an average of about $2,000,000 (or about 26 per cent) per year," says the partly censored document.

"RCMP program and Finance staff indicated that the RCMP's systematic budget reset and re-allocation contributed to this situation, which resulted in reduced resources available."

The report says the Conservative government's 2011 deficit reduction action plan, or DRAP, an initiative to chop $4 billion from government spending by this year, was partly to blame for the reduced spending to fight child porn.

Liberal MP Judy Sgro said the news came on the same day the government requested an additional $11 million for "partisan TV ads" through the supplementary estimates tabled in Parliament.

Seems like the budget deficit doesn't mean squat when it comes to taxpayer-funded Conservative election ads but its a grand extravagance when it boils down to protecting vulnerable children.

Syrzia - A Much Needed Primer for Progressives Everywhere.

No, we're not Greece.  We don't have their crushing economic crisis.  We don't have the punitive austerity regime they had.  Yet there are many problems, existing and looming for Canada, that will require progressive solutions and Syrzia affords us a mirror in which to take the measure of our own political parties.  We have much to learn.  From The Tyee:

You can't watch what is unfolding in Greece and not marvel at the clarity, fortitude and nerve of the new government there. In fact, we're pretty sure that many progressives across North America are saying to themselves, even if just quietly, "We'd sure like to do that."

Syriza is a heterogeneous party, made up of diverse strands of the Greek left, but united by the view that the country's ruling parties were too compromised to deliver a departure from the crushing economic conditions imposed on it. Although it didn't initiate them, Syriza opened itself to the social movements that emerged to challenge austerity and has become their authentic political voice. Now it has taken power peacefully and formed the first European government of the radical left since the Second World War. It did what parties are supposed to do.

The article lists eight rules that progressives need to learn from the example of Syrzia:

1.  Clearly identify the enemy.  

It is sometimes necessary to identify your own government as your enemy, especially when it is operating in collaboration with other entities in ways that are detrimental to your country and your childrens' future.  Don't forget who started this.  It was the Harper government, especially Joe Oliver, who smeared a goodly segment of our population as dangerous radicals, inimical to the interests of the country.  Returning that greeting is not only justifiable, it's essential.

2.  The forces of democracy have an obligation to fight back against the oligarchs and the "totalitarianism of the market."

Only a few benefit from the oligarchs' policies, but they have the power and they have a grip on the political system. The oligarchs prevent the creation of a genuinely fair electoral playing field via a rigged campaign finance system and the rollback of voting rights. The oligarchs bring in cheap immigrant labour but prevent immigrants from getting citizenship. The oligarchs buy politicians. Democracy -- real democracy -- is a threat to them.

3.  Inequality can only be fought when it is articulated what it means for people, how it denies them things that they need.

4.  Draw a link between what people need and what society itself needs.

Concentration of economic and political power in an elite ultimately weakens the country.  There is a need to stimulate demand which cannot be achieved as an increasingly large portion of the economy goes to just a few.  We must rebalance the rights of labour versus capital, rehabilitate the role of labour and collective bargaining, and restore public investment.

5.  Have a programme.  Say what you will do.  Don't get dragged into debates about how you will do it.

Syriza convinced voters that it was going to take action to end austerity. Incessantly, the right, the media and the European elite tried to goad them into saying that executing their program would require leaving the Eurozone, but they never took the bait.

What enabled Alexis Tsipras to give such a defiant speech earlier this month was that his party had campaigned and won on a clear platform. Not for ideological reasons, but because the Greek people instructed him to. He has no right to bow to the demands of Greece's creditors.  

6.  Electoral reform.  

As we've progressed steadily into the depths of neo-liberalism, political parties have shunned expressions of vision and platforms that resonate with the public. We've learned that politicians that don't make clear promises, arguing that it would put them at a disadvantage during a campaign, almost never introduce them afterwards when they're successful.  This is the formula for elected dictatorship.  

7.  If the political system is broken, be willing to start again, from scratch.

The adage that the way to reform is by getting inside and changing the party is a load of hooey.  That doesn't effect real change but merely sublimates dissent.  If the system is broken, try a new party, a new movement.

Too often political parties have become insular, out of touch with the public. They exist, seemingly, for the sake of existing, of preserving "the club."  

8.  Don't Seek a Return to the Good Old Days.

The support progressives need to mobilize is the young adult vote. Progressivism is about the future and the future is theirs.  Older voters may yearn for the good old days or whatever facsimile exists in their memories but they think it best not to stray far from today's "business as usual" political parties.

The 60s are gone and they're not coming back.  We have changed the world in ways we cannot fully comprehend.  We have to let the past go.

The article concludes with a plea for progressives to do whatever we can to help out Spain's new left-wing movement, Podemos.   For all the successes Syrzia has achieved, a victory in the upcoming polls for Podemos will be a massive breakthrough for the future of us all. 

What's Going On with the Senate?

It seems there are a good many senators anxious about the already overdue audit reports into their expenses.  Complicating matters is the letter they were cajoled into signing that waives all privilege, both Parliamentary and solicitor-client.

Suddenly we seem to have a Senate packed full of Mike Duffys in waiting. From what I'm hearing they're bringing in sawdust by the truckload to cover the floor of the Red Chamber.

The trick now is to figure how this is going to play out in Stephen Harper's election planning.  He's got that place heavily larded with his own appointees. 52 Conservatives versus 30 Liberals and 6 independents.

It's hard to see where this is going but we know that this prime minister never turns his back on something that he can transform into an opportunity.

Heads up.

You Play Ball With Me and I'll Stick the Bat Straight Up Your....

There's a scenario unfolding that's pretty amazing.

The White House has been negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran.  Obama has apparently kept his Israeli counterpart, Netanyahu, briefed on the negotiations and terms of the proposed deal including some concessions offered Iran.

Netanyahu doesn't like the deal.  He's been pushing for war against Iran - American war against Iran - for a long time.

The Israeli prime minister, facing a difficult election in just two weeks, has come to Washington claiming he needs to let Congress in on details the White House isn't revealing to them.  Netanyahu wants to stoke Congress up to resist a presidential veto.

There's no stepping back from this.  Either Netanyahu is flagrantly breaking White House confidences - he's spilling details Obama provided him - or else Israel has been spying on the negotiations - or Netanyahu is simply making stuff up and playing the Americans for suckers as he has so routinely in the past.

There are some observers speculating that the White House has a surprise or two of its own awaiting Netanyahu.  The sparks may fly tomorrow afternoon.

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Update - if you're not familiar with this chronic liar's rich history of deliberate and wanton prevarication, The Intercept offers a nice summary.

They'll Nip This in the Bud

It's enough to give an oligarch chest pain.  Barely a month in power, popular support for the left-wing, anti-austerity government in Greece is soaring.  Syrzia won the January polls with 36% of the votes.  A few weeks later and there's no sign of buyers' remorse.  Instead the party's support has climbed to almost 48%. Not bad for a movement that came out of nowhere just three years ago.

It's not so much the Greek government digging in its heels on debt repayment and austerity demands that will be infuriating the Euro bankers.  It's the attitude of the Greek people that they'll find unnerving.

On the street, optimism has returned. People worn down by gruelling austerity, on the back of unprecedented recession, are smiling. Government officials have taken to walking through central Athens, instead of ducking into chauffeur-driven cars to avoid protesters. Last week, finance minister Yanis Varoufakis – a maverick to many of his counterparts – was mobbed by appreciative voters as he ambled across Syntagma square.

“They’ve given us our voice back,” said Dimitris Stathokostopoulos, a prominent entrepreneur. “For the first time there’s a feeling that we have a government that is defending our interests. Germany needs to calm down. Austerity hasn’t worked. Wherever it has been applied it has spawned poverty, unemployment, absolute catastrophe.”

If there's one thing the ECB and IMF realize it's that this sort of thing can be contagious.  It can spread.  In other countries those populations are also feeling "worn down by austerity" and saddled with governments that are not defending their interests.

It's already taking hold in Spain.  Italy, Ireland, France and even Britain could be susceptible.  I expect the conservative lenders won't sit by idle.  They need the Greek people back in harness to austerity or, before long, everyone will be kicking over the traces.  Optimism, left unchecked, can be a very, very dangerous thing.

There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

In a decade or so the government of Canada will be in the market for new submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy.

In the 17-years since the Chretien government snapped up four used British boats, supposedly a bargain, we haven't seen much use out of them.  In fact we've about doubled the purchase price in maintenance bills trying to get the damned things seaworthy.

One of them, just one, has actually fired a torpedo.  That's 68-service years, one torpedo.  But wait, there's news.  HMCS Victoria took some guest journos aboard, sailed out of Esquimalt, dived and demonstrated a simulated torpedo launch.  They flooded one tube with compressed air and "fired" it.  It's sort of like a giant bathtub fart at 60-metres.

Now the navy proclaims that it has three of the four nearly ready to go, even if they all can't fire torpedoes.  Still that qualifies the fleet as operational.

So, why are we investing all this effort and money into these old boats? Advances in submarine technology have overtaken Canada's subs.  They're not remotely approaching what is "state of the art" today.  They don't seem to be particularly reliable and their safety record is pretty extensive - just not in a good way.

Michael Byers has come up with the best explanation.  The RCN is keeping these boats active to keep the door open for the purchase of new subs, real subs, the working kind.  That's around 10-years off so the navy wants to keep the capability alive lest the pols decide we can get by without submarines altogether.

One thing we know is that there'll be no money for new subs anytime soon.  Not since the collapse of the Soviet Union has a navy been allowed to deteriorate as the Canadian navy has under Chairman Harper.  We need provisioning ships. Ain't got'em.  We need air defence destroyers.  Ain't got those either.  We need Arctic patrol vessels - soon, eventually, maybe.  We have a three ocean coastline and we can't put one task force to sea because we're flat out of the necessary ships.

Know who's building ships?  Vlad Putin, that's who.  And he's planning to establish a significant Russian naval presence in the Arctic where seabed rights are contested.   Sure, there's the Law of the Sea and all that but Putin has been giving signs that he might prefer "finders, keepers."

But we've got three submarines to keep Putin at bay, don't we?  Yeah, right.

Netanyahu Has Screwed the Pooch for Israel

Even if the next US president is a Republican, what Netanyahu is doing this week will cost Israel far into the future.  What the Israeli prime minister has somehow failed to grasp is that he is targeting the office of the president.

Even those who wish him luck now will never look on him, or Israel,  the same way again. He's a handy snake to have around - for Republicans, this time - but, afterwards, everyone gets a stick.

There are lines and Netanyahu is crossing one, a big line.  It's the sort of thing that isn't forgotten and even a future Republican president won't readily forgive.

Americans are all about their presidency.  Hell, they campaign for the office for two years.  They crave it and getting it means everything yet here's this Israeli yahoo coming right into their own backyard to undermine it.  Oooh, that leaves scars.

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And then there's this, full page ad from the New York Times aimed at John Boehner

I'll See Your Cult and I'll Raise You One

They're dying to get at each other or at least they would be if only we gave them a chance.  Radical, fundamentalist Islam versus radical, fundamentalist Christianity - the End Times grudge match right there on the floor of the desert of ancient Mesopotamia.

An article in today's Independent explores what there is about ISIS that's drawing so many young Britons to the cause.  It suggests that ISIS is essentially a messianic cult with heavy End Times overtones.  The report identifies two areas in which ISIS has succeeded where others before it failed.

First, it’s come closer than other Salafist organisations to creating a “caliphate”, a geographical location where teachings of the Prophet Mohamed govern every aspect of existence. In that sense, it offers a homeland where disaffected young Muslims can turn their backs on everything they dislike – or have been encouraged to dislike – about the modern world.

Second, it understands the power of slick propaganda videos and wanton destructiveness.

...we are dealing with an eschatological movement of a type that became common in the Middle Ages. You and I may be looking forward to a long and peaceful existence, but these guys are eagerly anticipating the apocalypse.

In November, when the American hostage Abdul-Rahman (formerly Peter) Kassig was about to be murdered, his killers deliberately chose Dabiq as the site for their latest gruesome exhibition. “Here we are, burying the first American Crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive,” the man we now know to be Emwazi says in the propaganda video. It’s tempting to dismiss this as empty rhetoric, but it refers to prophecies that the final showdown between Islam and its enemies will begin in Dabiq; members of Isis are expecting the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, a messianic figure who will lead a Muslim army to victory before the end of the world.

I don’t know whether the story is apocryphal, but, according to some sources, Osama bin Laden was warned in 2008 that the founders of what would become Isis were obsessed with the Mahdi and the end-of-days. He’s supposed to have written to them, saying, “Cut it out.” Sadly, this eschatological movement took no notice.

It has now eclipsed al-Qaeda as the go-to terror organisation of the day, with the added attraction of controlling an area larger than some long-established countries. Running away to join Isis isn’t an attractive option for most of us, but the picture might look different if you believe the world is about to end. People do remarkable things under the influence of millenarian ideology, and Isis is something new in the field: an apocalyptic movement that offers a temporary refuge from the modern world and a last chance to be saved.


Well that sure sounds like a cult to me. Messianic, eschatological, End Times, afterlife stuff laid on pretty thick. But we've got messianic, eschatological, End Times, afterlife (Rapture) folks of our very own only they're Christian. So why not match them up - our cult versus theirs? Something akin to a desert cage match. Two great religions enter the cage, only one will come out. One night, in Dabiq - winner takes all.  The pay TV rights alone should be astonishing.