A Bit of the Cross-Examination I'd Love to Put to Nigel Wright.

I'm not Donald Bayne. I haven't had access to the documents or weeks to prepare for the cross examination of Nigel Wright.  These are, however, some of the questions I would put to this witness:

Mister Wright, you were the Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Harper.  You're the top aide to the prime minister, his right hand man and yet, despite your email to the contrary, you maintain that you lied to Mr. Harper, concealed critical information and peddled half truths relating to a scandal about to engulf Mr. Harper and his party.Was that your job and, if so, on whose authority did you keep Mr. Harper in the dark, even misled?

How often would Mr. Harper meet with you on each day? Did you have a standard, scheduled meeting? Were there other, unscheduled meetings? Were these sessions issue focused or were they wide ranging? Did you chat about personal matters, general interest stuff, the goings on in your daily lives? So you would have these various meetings with the one man to whom you answer and never let out a peep about what was going on with Duffy? How many weeks was that or was it months?

You talked with Benjamin Perrin about this. You were both in on it. That's plain from your emails and Perrin's emails and other correspondence. Did you discuss how the prime minister's lawyer would get away with concealing these events from the one person to whom he owes such a clear and powerful professional duty? Wasn't it obvious that, if this matter ever leaked out to the public, it could have enormous adverse ramifications to the prime minister? Did you and Mr. Perrin, of your own volition, put Mr. Harper in such enormous jeopardy? For whose benefit, yours, Mr. Harper's, senator Duffy's?

You testified that you did all this out of a sense of obligation. Did Mr. Perrin act out of some similar obligation to Mr. Duffy? What possible obligation did Mr. Perrin have to Duffy? What interest of Mr. Perrin's was served by him keeping his client in the dark on such a potentially volatile issue?

If Mr. Harper, the legendary micro-manager, truly did not know anything about this is this something you pulled behind his back? Did you act contrary to your duty to your prime minister or did you do this skulduggery with his tacit approval and authority? Was this an act of treachery, the dealings of a rogue agent running the prime minister's office?

Or is this simply the best narrative you can come up with that comports, no matter how awkwardly and unconvincingly, with the facts you cannot deny?

When you and your cohort, Mr. Harper's legal counsel, Benjamin Perrin, wrote those emails did you imagine that they might somehow surface in a court of law? You're both skilled lawyers.  You have a Masters of Laws from Harvard, Perrin is a law professor. The judge is also a lawyer. Do you expect him to believe that two highly accomplished lawyers, such as yourself and Mr. Perrin, would write emails of this nature if they believed they were acting legitimately?

Was it Mr. Perrin's involvement in your scheme that led to his abrupt, unexpected departure from the PMO just a couple of weeks later and his return to the University of British Columbia? Why else would he have left under such bizarre circumstances?

As two such highly educated legal professionals did it not dawn on either of you that you were participating in a scheme that could be considered criminal? Did you not consider this some form of bribery or, if not bribery, extortion on the part of the senator? Are those not matters of such import that you would have no choice but to divulge them to the prime minister? Are crimes or quasi-crimes regularly commissioned or perpetrated in the Prime Minister's Office as this one, by your account, seems to have been?

If this was a legitimate transaction, why on earth would you go to such apparently Herculean lengths to keep Mr. Harper in the dark about what you were doing? Just what was it you didn't want to leave any record of him knowing?

When, as your emails plainly indicate, you decided to run roughshod over the Tory Senate leadership and senator LeBreton in particular, do you expect anyone to believe that you also did that behind Mr. Harper's back? Do you maintain and expect anyone to believe that none of those senators - LeBreton, Tkachuk, Stewart-Olsen - or any of the others in on this also dummied up and never let Mr. Harper in on your scheme?  Half the Tory caucus and the Conservative Party executive must have known what was going on but you insist that Mr. Harper knew nothing, no one told him anything.  How often did you keep Mr. Harper in the dark and about what matters? Who decided what would be concealed from the prime minister, when Mr. Harper would be deliberately misled? Does he delegate that authority to his Chief of Staff? Is it an implied authority?  Or are you simply, hands down, the worst, most duplicitous, untrustworthy, irresponsible Chief of Staff in the history of Canadian politics?

Was there an alternate channel of communication whereby Mr. Harper could be kept up to date yet maintain a pretense of plausible deniability?  Might someone else, such as Arthur Hamilton, been the canary singing in Mr. Harper's ear?

It's difficult, bordering on impossible, to believe that a sophisticated, highly intelligent, accomplished and supposedly straight arrow guy like you can stand here and say that this one time he went full bore "rogue." That just makes no sense.

Oh, Damn! Jimmy Carter has Cancer.

The most decent president in modern memory, Jimmy Carter, has announced that he has cancer and it has spread throughout his body, apparently metastasized.

He's the sort of gentleman who'll fight it for all he's worth and if there is someone who dispenses miracles I hope he'll spare a bit of time for Jimmy.

Big Day Tomorrow - It's Earth Overshoot Day - August 13, 2015.

Tomorrow is Earth Overshoot Day, the date on which mankind has gobbled up a full year's worth of renewable resources - biomass, water and such.

The date falls a couple of days earlier every year as we increase our consumption levels beyond our planet's carrying capacity.  Each year brings us ever closer to our ecological breaking point, the point of civilizational collapse.

It's sort of like spending $150 for every $100 you earn. You can get away with it for a while but not forever. Eventually the bills come in and there's no money left to go out.

As I've written many times before, the evidence of Overshoot is all around us. It's tangible, palpable even visible to the naked eye. It appears in the form of ecological degradation. From the International Space Station crew members can gaze down and see glaciers retreating, dried up lakes, rivers that no longer reach the sea. They can see dust clouds that rise over China and cross the Pacific to North America. They can see algae blooms, oceanic dead zones, that show up along our coasts.  NASA's Grace satellites record the surface subsidence caused by the rapid draining of our aquifers for irrigation.  We see it on our docks in the collapse of global fisheries made good only by "fishing down the food chain." It is manifested in the accumulation of pollution in excess of nature's cleansing capacity.

From tomorrow, August 13, until December 31 we're left with eating our seed corn. For more than a third of the year we'll go into ecological deficit, consuming nature's ever dwindling resource reserves. Those reserves are dwindling, some of them faster than we imagine if we think about such things at all.

Here's the thing. It's not just that we're consuming more resources than Earth can supply. It's that we're dependent on that. We're on a path that, for a good portion of mankind, must be terminal.  Too many mouths at the table and all of them wanting a second helping of the apple pie.

You don't have to be brilliant to understand this. You just have to be sane.  The trick is to understand this and remain sane. That's too much for a lot of people so they take the default option and just try to forget about it.  Psychologists call that a "defence mechanism" only in this case it's just the opposite.

Sure, Nigel, So Why Didn't You Just Write Him a Cheque and Be Done With It?

Let the narrative unfold. Nigel Wright says he gave Duffy a cheque for $90,000 to clear the Cavendish Cottager's Senate tab because he felt an obligation to Old Duff. Really, that's it? But no, it's not, is it.

It wasn't just a $90,000 gift of the innocent sort to which no wrongdoing could attach anymore than it was just $90,000.  It was more than $90,000 - a lot more - and it was a gift with clear strings attached.  In other words, it was a bribe.

All you have to do is go back to the Duffy email leaked to CTV's Bob Fife.  That email was contemporaneous with the events. It laid out a deal, the elements of which all occurred. There's nothing made up about that, for convenience sake, after the fact. It is the only truth you may find in this whole sordid business.

It involved money and "something else." Duffy agreed to do certain things in exchange for the money and "something else." The things Duffy agreed to do were for the very real benefit of certain interests.

What did Duffy agree to do, what were the terms imposed on him?  He was told to stop talking about the expense scandal publicly. He was told to stop cooperating with the Deloitte auditors acting on behalf of the Senate in a quasi-judicial capacity to investigate and analyze senators' expenses.

On the other side, Nigel offered Duffy two gifts - the cash and "something else." The second part was a promise to intervene with key senators to have them launder Duffy's Senate audit report. It's sort of like saying, "you do this and that and I'll give you cash and corrupt the Senate to get you off the hook." It's a lot like money laundering and it taints the "gift" and makes it a clear bribe.

It's a measure of the corruption of the prime minister, his PMO, his key aides, the Senate leadership, and the RCMP that this is not being treated as a real bribe. This whole thing is bent. Senators Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen intervened, to the exclusion of other members of the audit committee, to rewrite the Duffy audit report - to launder the Senate audit report. They did precisely what Wright had promised Duffy he'd see them do.

It's critical to keep in mind that all the parties to this acted believing they would never be found out. It was one of those things that would just blow over, no one the wiser. Sort of thing that happens with some regularity.

Duffy blew the deal. He leaked what he was supposed to keep secret to his friends in that email. Somebody passed it along to CTV.

Why, then, did the RCMP go to such lengths to absolve Wright of any criminal culpability in bribing Duffy? There's only once conceivable answer - because taking down Wright would leave the door open to Stephen Harper himself. Taking Wright off the hook takes Harper off the hook.  Case closed.

Cops are trained to correct the dots, not erase them. This whole business is rotten.

Update:

Some of the emails released to the public today show that the way Duffy was handled was based on a very convoluted web of lies to be disseminated for public consumption.  Lies intended to control and pervert the narrative of the Cavendish Cottager's expense abuses. It was a grand effort orchestrated by Wright and Perrin, supposedly behind Harper's back, that involved an astonishing number of people in Harper's bloated PMO.

Duffy was to be treated differently from other senators in the same jam. The focus was to protect the invaluable hog who kept laying golden eggs for the prime minister. Duffy was worth his weight in campaign contribution cheques and no effort was to be spared to keep him in harness.

Harper's key staffers co-opted and seemingly corrupted the Senate or at least key senior Tory senators who were manipulated into doing the prime minister's bidding.  Where once it was merely implausible that Harper wasn't pulling the levers on this one, now it's become inconceivable. There was nothing rogue about this. It was a scheme that engaged dozens of staffers in the PMO, a bevy of senior Tory senators and the Conservative Party itself. You would have to believe that everybody knew except Harper and that is palpable nonsense.

Well Isn't That Just Typical - Two Old Jews...

Who just happen to be totally awesome - Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders.

Chomsky is plainly on board with Sanders quest for the Democratic presidential nomination only he doesn't think the Vermont senator has a chance.

I'm glad that Sanders is running. A good way to bring important ideas and facts to people. His candidacy might also press the Dems a little in a progressive direction. In our system of bought elections he has scarcely a chance of getting beyond the primaries, and even if by some miracle he were elected he wouldn't be able to do anything, lacking any congressional representatives, governors, etc. As far as I can see he's a thorn in the side of the Clinton machine, which is not a bad thing.

For his part, Sanders appreciates Chomsky's support but doesn't share his old friend's dismal outlook.

[I'm] “not as pessimistic as Noam...He’s right, we live in an increasingly oligarchic form of society, where billionaires are able to buy elections and candidates, and it is very difficult, not just for Bernie Sanders but for any candidate who represents working families. But I think the situation is not totally hopeless, and I think we do have a shot to win this thing.”

What comes through when you listen to Bernie Sanders is how much we need so many more just like him - up here in Canada too.

NDP Candidate Dares to Speak the Truth - And Is Promptly Dropped.

In Tommy Angry Beard's NDP there'll be no straight talk about Israel and its steady atrocities against Palestinian civilians in the prison camp commonly known as Gaza.  There'll be no loose talk about war crimes and certainly no mention of Dahiyeh. That might cost votes.

In a gaffe that sounded like something Noam Chomsky might say (and he has), candidate Morgan Wheeldon posted a Facebook entry claiming it was arguable that Israel was seeking to ethnically cleanse Gaza and even used the dreaded words, "war crime."

That sort of talk was for the old NDP, the party that used to speak truth to power, not today's NDP, the party that won't let principle stand in the way of grubbing for every vote it can get.

Update:

LeDaro has posted two interesting clips. One is of Jimmy Carter, the other a British MP, Gerald Kaufman.  Good thing neither of them is an NDP candidate. Mulcair would have them both axed.



 And that is how far Mulcair and his followers have debased the New Democratic Party.

IPCC - "Criminally Complacent"

Arctic expert, professor Peter Wadhams, doesn't think much of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the Cambridge professor of ocean physics and head of the university's Polar Oceans Physics Group, denounces the IPCC as a dangerous sellout.

He highlighted that the IPCC has failed to quantify and properly assess the risk of a methane outbreak from melting permafrost and undersea methane hydrates.

"Because that is scarcely mentioned by the IPCC in it's assessment because I think it is being criminally complacent in not wanting to stress or talk about the possibility of some major catastrophes.

"They were once a body that warned the world about climate change, but now they are a body that is trying to say 'Well, it's bad, but not that bad. Just reduce your carbon emssions and everything will be okay.' But it won't. These things have come along, there is enormous evidence that this is happening, and we should be really worried about it."

Wadhams warned of the knock-on effects of loss of Arctic sea ice including a massive discharge of now frozen Arctic methane deposits, sea level rise and, ultimately, catastrophic global warming.

"Instead of getting less than a metre of sea level rise this century, which is what is predicted by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the accelerated melt of the Greenland ice sheet could give us a couple of metres or more this century.

"In fact some glaciologists are talking about four or five metres. That might be extreme, but it is very likely to be more sea level rise than so far has been predicted. That means we have been very complacent about sea level rise and we ought to be realizing that many coastal regions, for instance the coast of Bangladesh which is very vulnerable, Eastern China, and a lot of cities like Miami, will have to be abandoned and that will have an enormous impact on the global economy and the lives of people."

He then adds that the reduction in sea-ice will cause the albedo of the Arctic to reduce, absorbing more warmth and further accelerating global warming. "This attempt to pretend that we can keep global warming below 2 degrees, which was already a pretence, is even more ridiculous. It is certainly going to get to 4 or 5 degrees by the end of this century, which will then have quite catastrophic impacts on agricultural production, for instance, and being able to support the population we have now, let alone an increase in population."

"To slow the release of methane and prevent a methane bomb we need to bring back Arctic sea-ice, and to do that we need to cool the planet."

Australian climate scientist Andrew Glikson has also written at The Conversation on Methane and the risk of runaway global warming. But other scientists have also indicated the strong risks of Arctic Methane Feedback amplifying warming

Wadhams also denounced the complacency of the world's political leadership.

"There is a conspiracy of complacency throughout the world in which they [politicians] still imagine that if we do a few minor things, a few minor adjustments and reduce our carbon emissions then all will be well. But it won't. Because we have already got too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We are already going to have more than 2 degrees warming even if we don't emit anymore because of the existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." said Wadhams.

"We have to not only stop emitting [CO2] or reduce our emissions, but find ways to take it out of the atmosphere. That is a technology that hasn't been developed. It would be a massive research program to develop, but we should be doing it. A bit like the Manhattan Project. We should be doing it from the point of view of our own survival. That is the sort of thing the present generation should be concentrating all our attention on.

"If we can do that, then all our children have got a future."

"When you put together all the changes that are going on you see how they are ramping up to become a major change. As they go on, they tend to accelerate. Everything is increasing exponentially.

"My fear is that no-one will do anything because of cowardice and inertia and all the normal human attributes. They say 'Well let's wait until it hits us and then we'll act', but by the time it really hits us, by the time weather changes have made it impossible to feed everybody in the world, for instance, and we have worldwide famine, those sort of changes at that scale have happened then it's too late to do anything. We will by then have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to prevent a runaway global climate catastrophe. My fear is that our own inertia will lead us to not take action until it is actually too late to save ourselves."

I so wish Wadhams was just some wild-eyed radical on a rant - only he's not.  In fact he's just another voice in the choir of Arctic experts who have been trying in vain to warn us of what is happening in the far north and what that holds in store for our children and theirs. Their research, their analyses and their warnings are simply falling on deaf ears.  Everything is flushed down the memory hole.

A lot of the science types believe it quite likely we're heading for between 4C and 6C of warming by the end of this century.  In April I took an online course presented by top experts, including Schellnhuber, from the Potsdam Institute examining what awaited mankind and all other life on Earth should we allow the planet to warm by 4C. It's the sort of information we wouldn't dare teach even at a highschool level.  

Our politicians haven't got the guts to address it, to even hint at it, and neither do we. They know it's a Pandora's Box. Once opened they would stand exposed, incapable of justifying their complacency, borderline perfidy.

By the way, Wadhams believes the only hope left requires geo-engineering to cool the planet and restore the Arctic sea ice and polar atmosphere.

Update:  Meanwhile, the very sort of politician Wadham denounces, in this case the NDP's Tommy Angry Beard, has pulled a rabbit out of his ass to declare that Canada can expand Tar Sands production, just in a "sustainable" way.

The Sparks Will Fly on Wednesday

Nigel Wright steps into the witness box to re-open the Duffy trial on Wednesday. It's hard to see that there's much middle ground available to Wright. He will either exonerate Stephen Harper, corroborating Harper's claim that he knew nothing about the $90,000 deal, or he'll sink Harper - at least if he tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but...

The Crown's examination in chief of its star witness probably won't be very exciting. If there are any sparks they'll probably await Wright's cross-examination by Duffy's defence counsel, Don Bayne.

Wright's evidence goes to the main charge faced by Duffy, accepting a bribe. The bribe was the 90-grand and the person giving that bribe was Nigel Wright who, through some twist of investigatorial and prosecutorial logic is not deemed to have been a culpable party to the bribe. It's a theory that brings the crime more in line with extortion than bribery.

My take on it is that the Crown considers Wright blameless because there was nothing received by Wright in exchange for the cheque.  However, if Wright was merely acting as a very generous agent for the party and his prime minister, then the benefit received from that bribe by others should also be attributed to Wright.

If I give you a bribe to do something for somebody else, it's still a bribe and I'm legally liable.  If I give you a bag of cash to see that a contract goes to Acme Widgets it doesn't matter if I have a direct interest in Acme or its contract. It's still a bribe and I'm criminally liable for making it.

There was consideration for the bribe in the terms attached to the money delivered to Duffy's lawyer.  The money was peanuts although perhaps not to Duffy. Yet it was minuscule in the context of the political damage it was intended to avert. The terms are laid out in Duffy's email to his confidantes that somehow managed to find its way into CTV reporter Bob Fife's hands.

Duffy was to do certain things.  He was to immediately cease cooperating with the Deloitte auditors. He was to immediately go mute and make no further public statements.  For that he was to get 90-grand and a promise that the Senate audit report would "go easy on" Old Duff.

There's the bribe and whoever imposed those terms committed bribery, right Nigel?  Getting senators Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen to launder the Senate audit report was part of that bribe.  Take the money, pay it to this party, and I promise you I will corrupt senior members of the Senate in the exercise of their duties. You can't expect to do that and be found blameless. Not even Nigel Wright, not even Stephen Harper.

Wright, Perrin and Harper did what they did not because they believed there was no wrongdoing in it.  They did what they did because they believed their skulduggery would never see the light of day. They believed Duffy would honour his promise to dummy up, go mute. Then Duffy's ego got the better of him and he couldn't help himself. He let others in on the deal.

Here's the thing to remember. Duffy's email was sent when the deal was made. It is contemporaneous with the facts and events. What it described actually transpired, every element of it. It wasn't made up after the fact. There was no element of trying to shift blame from Duffy onto someone else. There was no finger pointing. It was a simple narration of a deal that came to pass just as outlined.

The PMO gang didn't believe Duffy would shoot his mouth off.  Duffy didn't think any of his confidantes would leak the email to Bob Fife.  If any of them had the slightest inkling the deal might be leaked there would have been no deal, Wright would not have written the cheque, Perrin would not have drafted the lawyer's letter that transmitted the cheque to Duffy's solicitor. They would not have left their fingerprints all over this.

The Tyee Outs "Harper the Serial Abuser"

A fine little compendium of the abuses and excesses of the Prince of Darkness from our friends at the Left Coast Tyee. You might want to add this to your email list.

Oh yeah, there's a Part Deux.

And So It Goes

Think of them as the rectal thermometer of our oceans and lakes - algae blooms and blankets of seaweed.  When they start showing up, en masse, on your coast and your beaches they're telling you that the ocean has a fever, it's really sick.

This is what they can look like.

That's the waterfront of the Mexican tourist Mecca, Cancun.  Apparently the stench is appalling, bad enough that tourists are canceling reservations.

The picture-perfect beaches and turquoise waters that people expect from the Caribbean are increasingly being fouled by mats of plant matter that attract biting sand fleas and smell like rotten eggs.

Clumps of the brownish seaweed, known as sargassum, have long washed up on Caribbean coastlines, but researchers say the algae has exploded in extent and frequency in recent years.

From the Dominican Republic in the north, to Barbados in the east, and Mexico’s Caribbean resorts to the west, officials are authorising emergency money to clear stinking mounds of seaweed that in some cases have piled up to nearly three metres (10 feet) high on beaches, choked scenic coves and cut off moored boats.

For the last few years Chinese fishermen and beachgoers have faced something similar:

While out here, the Pacific Northwest is living with "The Blob" and an algae bloom stretching from northern California to northern British Columbia.

Inland, Lake Erie's toxic algae bloom has returned.  Sorry, Pelee Island.

As a bloom spreads throughout the surface layer of lake water, the cyanobacteria release toxins known as microcystins into the environment. Simply swimming in water with high concentrations of microcystins can cause symptoms such as stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, and weakness, as well as skin and eye irritation, sore throat and allergic reactions. If these toxins enter the drinking water supply in sufficient amounts, such as during extreme outbreaks, symptoms can develop that cause liver and kidney damage, or life-threatening bouts of gastroenteritis, aka "stomach flu" (especially for children and the elderly).

Coupled with these toxins, further problems occur due to the life cycle of the cyanobacteria. Since individual bacteria only live for a very short time, even as the bloom spreads, millions of them die in the process. The death and decay of the bacteria strips oxygen from the water (hypoxia), and the dead organisms form a layer of scum on the surface. Thus, the living bacteria in the top layer of the water absorbs sunlight for photosynthesis while at the same time more sunlight is blocked from reaching deeper waters by this scum on the surface. This combination kills off important plant and microorganism species that live deeper down, and as well as any organisms that depend upon them, worsening the hypoxia in the lake water. Some regions of the lake can become "dead zones," with massive fish die-offs ("fish kills") that can make the situation worse.

What these events show is that the way we're living is compatible with actually living.  We're not only fertilizing our farm fields, we're also fertilizing the algae in our lakes and oceans. And, where our handiwork erupts, we're creating dead zones that kill off fish species and, left unchecked, create water acidification.

I don't know, isn't it time we tried something else?

The New York Times' Fuzzy Logic

An editorial in today's New York Times illustrates how besotted American thinking remains on international affairs. Time to unpack the Times' fuzzy logic.

The editorial concerns international rivalry over Arctic resources, especially Russia's somewhat aggressive posturing and the prospect it could trigger a new arms race, this one in the far north.

"It is not surprising that a country with the longest Arctic coastline should want to strengthen its northern defenses as the region opens up to shipping and economic exploitation. And it would be understandable for the United States and Canada to want to do the same. But an arms race is not the answer to the Arctic’s future.

"Just as President Obama argued in his American University speech for the primacy of institutions and diplomacy in seeking peace for the Middle East, so should the United States and its allies seek to limit Russian influence in the Arctic through cooperation on the eight-nation Arctic Council and at the United Nations. That is another compelling reason why the United States should join the 162 countries that have ratified the Law of the Sea, an action blocked by a clutch of bullheaded right-wing senators."

Yes, an arm race should be avoided. However do we have to entrust that effort to America and "her allies"? Is America supposed to be the lead partner as overseer of the future of the Arctic?  Why, because of Alaska?  

The NYT editors write, "It is not surprising that a country with the longest Arctic coastline should want to strengthen its northern defenses as the region opens up to shipping and economic exploitation."  The country with "the longest Arctic coastline" in their view is plainly Russia which has about 40,000 kms. of Arctic coastline.  Pretty impressive but what about Greenland? It has 44,000 kms. of Arctic coastline.  And then there's us, Canada, and we have 162,000 kms. of Arctic coastline and that's more than Greenland, Russia, the US and all the others put together.

Now, let's look at the Times' suggestions about how to deal with Russia. They propose that the US "and it's minions allies" limit Russian influence in the
Arctic through an anti-Russian alliance cooperation on the eight-nation Arctic Council and at the United Nations.

Russia is a sovereign nation and should be as entitled as any other to influence its legitimate territory as it sees fit - the old Treaty of Westphalia business, you know. Yet the paths to limit Russian influence are narrow and few. The Times seems to think a policy of containment is just dandy.  We could march right up to Russia's borders - again - just as we have in eastern Europe. That's been a brilliant idea, especially when it comes to avoiding an arms race.  And, of course, once Moscow sees itself yet again facing an American-led gang purpose built to limit its influence over territory it may arguably claim as its own, it'll back right down, no? 

Let's face it. The only conceivable justification for an American-led Arctic coalition is because the hillbillies have all the guns and, as the legendary Ignatieff has put it, a "muscular foreign policy."

America deserves a place at the Arctic table, sure enough, but it should not be allowed to turn the Arctic Council into another posse, or coalition of the reluctantly complacent.  We've seen how well America's recent adventures in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, just about everywhere have worked out. This time we've got skin in the game, a lot more than the Americans.  Let's give them their chips and welcome them to the table but they can't be the dealer.

I Know How I'm Voting

The Point of No Return?

A friend sent me a link to a Rolling Stone article, "The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares are Already Here." It's a relatively complete and accurate synopsis of the state of our climate-changed world today.  Fair warning - it's a dismal read that you may find upsetting before you sit down to Sunday dinner (if you still do that sort of thing).  Here's my follow up:


For the first time people in their 30s and younger have to contemplate the possibility that their lives will end not by mishap or natural cause but out of the chaos of climate change.

Some, such as climate scientist and professor, Guy McPherson, who maintains the blog “Nature Bats Last,” have already thrown in the towel. Articles are now appearing about how the main occupational hazard of client science types has become severe depression.

Even in Canada the political response is to talk about vague, “political” targets for reducing emissions by a certain percentage by a certain date in hopes of staying within another “political” number, the 2C target – neither of which is anchored in science.  In the result we’re staying behind the problem, never daring to actually get in front of it even though that’s the only place where we can hope to achieve any effective result.

Because we don't know where the point of no return is (if we haven't already crossed it), the only avenue for effective action on climate change requires that we get ahead of the challenge and do everything necessary to stay there.  Nothing short of that will work. The current approach will buy as bit of extra time but nothing more.

Our leadership can’t think beyond the notional emissions reduction scenarios. They see this in the context of atmospherics. The equally existential challenge of ocean acidification isn’t even on their horizon.

The most lethal mistake they’re making is to take climate change in isolation, de-linking it from the companion threats of over-population and over-consumption.

At my birth the world’s population stood at the entirely sustainable 2.5 to 2.8-billion level.  Now, in just one lifetime, we’re nearing 7.5-billion and heading to 9 by 2050 or earlier. At my birth society, from the developed world to the Third World, had far lower per-capita consumption.  Today there are ever more mouths to feed and they are likewise growing ever more voracious in their consumption of resources far beyond our planet’s carrying capacity.  Just a decade ago World Overshoot Day fell in mid-October.  This year it arrived on August 13.

Natural feedback loops evidence tipping points already crossed.  Dr. McPherson, as of last month, has catalogued about 60 of them so far. He concludes that we’ve woken the sleeping giant, nature, and from here on in, our feeble efforts to reduce future emissions are a hollow gesture. I hope he’s not right but I don’t see where he’s wrong.

We debate the rate of climate change onset and the severity of its impacts but rarely in the context of our global civilization’s resilience to endure or even survive them. We’re doing next to nothing on adaptation. While Calgary was flooded, much of the city underwater, an annual symposium of an engineering group dealing with natural disasters was held in Toronto (which had itself been flooded weeks earlier).  One of the leading experts, a professor emeritus from McGill, suggested Canada is in dire need of new and reinforced infrastructure that he estimated would cost upwards of a trillion dollars.  Instead our federal government is budgeting a meaningless $50-million a year which doesn’t keep up to the ongoing decay.

The simple fact is we’re not resilient.  To the contrary, the rise of today’s global civilization over the past 30-years has been built on defying the need for resilience, rejecting posterity. Ours has become a world of maximized production/maximized consumption in which the guiding philosophy has become “I can so I will” and rejects any notion of whether we “should.”  We institutionalize people who think that way - some are criminals, some are lunatics. Some we elect to Parliament.

In March, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), released a study that found most of the planet’s arable farmland will be gone in just 60-years, the victim of the intensive, industrial agriculture we practice in order to feed today’s 7+ billion people.  I had read about this in an online course I’d taken on global food supply a month or two earlier. Even good farmland, as in Europe and North America, is already somewhat degraded and the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides is stripping the soil ever faster.

Sure, food production is at record levels but that's obscuring the important part. We're producing this volume of food through intensive agriculture and chemical conjuring tricks associated with industrial agriculture that are depleting the very soil growing this bounty.  And we're utterly dependent on that. It's not like we can quit and let nature recover. That's not an option until we're prepared to allow an enormous percentage of our global population simply die (with the proviso that we'll somehow manage to survive the world war(s) that this triggers).

I have no doubt that this is going to be on us far sooner than we imagined and we’re facing a fairly sudden collapse. Our societies, that collectively constitute our global civilization, are already astonishingly unbalanced and it won’t take much to tip us over.  When Iran records a “wet bulb” temperature of 74C and the dry temp in Baghdad hits 53C where do you imagine this is going. And, of course, this year we’re in store for a super El Nino which causes global temperatures to spike even higher. These are impacts that can destabilize countries, exacerbate old tensions - ethnic, social, religious - triggering unrest and conflict.  The devastating war in Syria arose out of the impacts of severe drought.

Several years ago it was found that, as we eject ourselves from the Holocene and get sucked into the Anthropocene, we would embark on a temperature regime in which every year would be hotter than the hottest year experienced in the previous 150-years. Every year. It's predicted to begin around 2020, first in the Caribbean, and overtaking every other nation by 2047. That may have already begun.  That will, of course, result in a super-heated atmosphere which, with ever greater surface evaporation and transpiration, will sharply increase atmospheric water vapour, the most powerful greenhouse gas of them all and usher in a new paradigm of severe storm events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration.  And yet we are and apparently intend to remain mortally dependent on infrastructure that is aged, rapidly deteriorating and, in any event, designed to meet the needs of a climatic age that’s long gone.

It would be nice to believe that we're finally playing catch up but we're not. We haven't even identified where we have to be and by when in order to catch up and, without that, the idea of ever getting ahead of these challenges before we get overtaken by devastating events is a grand and dangerous delusion. 

Gorbie Says - "Ban the Bomb"

Earlier this week Der Spiegel published an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev in which the former Soviet/Russian leader reflected quite eloquently on the perilous state of nuclear weaponry in the 21st century.  Sooner or later, in Gorbie's opinion, they will be used just as surely as the spread of them will be almost impossible to check.

The problem, as he sees it, isn't with Iran or any of the other countries toying with getting nukes.  In Gorbachev's view, the Gordion Knot of nuclear proliferation lies straight at the top.

It is the correct goal in any case. Nuclear weapons are unacceptable. The fact that they can wipe out the entirety of civilization makes them particularly inhumane. Weapons like this have never existed before in history and they cannot be allowed to exist. If we do not get rid of them, sooner or later they will be used.

That's why we should not forget that the elimination of nuclear weapons is the obligation of every country that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Though America and Russia have by far the largest arsenals at their disposal.

Gorbachev warns against being lulled into complacency by the notion of "mutually assured destruction," (MAD) being a safeguard against any nuclear power actually using them.

There's a dangerous logic in that. Here's another question: If five or 10 countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons, then why can't 20 or 30? Today, a few dozen countries have the technical prerequisites to build nuclear weapons. The alternative is clear: Either we move toward a nuclear-free world or we have to accept that nuclear weapons will continue to spread, step by step, across the globe. And can we really imagine a world without nuclear weapons if a single country amasses so many conventional weapons that its military budget nearly tops that of all other countries combined? This country would enjoy total military supremacy if nuclear weapons were abolished.

[American militarism] is an insurmountable obstacle on the road to a nuclear-free world. That's why we have to put demilitarization back on the agenda of international politics. This includes a reduction of military budgets, a moratorium on the development of new types of weapons and a prohibition on militarizing space. Otherwise, talks toward a nuclear-free world will be little more than empty words. The world would then become less safe, more unstable and unpredictable. Everyone will lose, including those now seeking to dominate the world.

We have reached a crossroads in relations between America and Russia. Many are already talking about a new Cold War. Talks between both powers over important global problems have practically been put on ice. That includes the question of nuclear disarmament. Trust, the very capital we worked so hard to build, has been destroyed.

...I'm very worried. The current state of things is scary. The nuclear powers still have thousands of nuclear warheads. Nuclear weapons are still stationed in Europe. The pace of reducing stockpiles has slowed considerably. We are witnessing the beginning of a new arms race. The militarization of space is a real danger. The danger of nuclear proliferation is greater than ever before. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not entered into force, primarily because the Americans did not ratify it. This would have been extremely important.

...No matter how difficult the situation is, we must not fall into resignation or panic. In the mid-1980s, there was no shortage of people who thought the train to atomic hell was unstoppable. But then we achieved a lot in very short space of time. Thousands of nuclear warheads were destroyed and several types of nuclear weapons, such as intermediate-range missiles, were disposed of. We can be proud of that. We accomplished all that together. It should be a lesson for today's leaders: for Obama, Putin and Merkel.

Mr. Gorbachev's remarks tie in rather neatly with the observations of Andrew Bacevich in "The New American Militarism."  There, the former US Army unit commander turned professor, explored how precision guidance had so increased the effectiveness and reach of conventional weapons that it had undermined the military utility of nuclear weapons with their overkill and hard to control, unintended and undesired knock-on consequences.  In other words, the role of nuclear warheads for offensive purposes was over and their sole remaining value was as a deterrent against attack.  They're now defensive weapons. Weak countries that feel vulnerable to attack from their neighbours (yes, Iran) want them to deter aggression. That's the compelling reason to get them but, after that, you may wind up with lunatics at the button.

Dippers, Beware of a Left Wing Insurgency

Britain's Labour Party may offer a cautionary tale for today's Blairified New Democrats.  Layton and Mulcair have been Harper's handmaidens in His quest to shift Canada's political centre far to the Right.  In fairness, the Libs have done their share of the heavy lifting too, transforming the party of Laurier, St. Laurent, Pearson and Trudeau (the real one) into the Conservative-Lites.

It's probably less seismic for the Libs than the New Dems, the former "principled" party, the "conscience of Parliament."  However, like their Labour colleagues before them, the abandonment of the Left has been accepted as the price of power.  And how has that worked out for the Brits?

Blair, with his lap dog support of America, his lies and his illegal war, was Labour's wrecking ball. The party found no salvation in Blair's successor, Brown, leaving the way clear for the Conservatives to come to power.  Labour's Ed Milliband tried to revive his party's fortunes but, in a surprise election outcome, David Cameron scored a solid majority win.

Milliband stepped down and Labour licked its wounds, hoping a new leader somewhat to the Right of Milliband would restore the party to its former glory. Instead, the Cameron victory laid the groundwork for a civil war in the Labour ranks led by dark horse, Jeremy Corbyn.

His lead in constituency nominations, the flow of endorsements from union executives, the jumpy responses of rival campaigns, the rising panic among many Labour MPs and the enthusiasm he is generating at the leadership hustings increasingly suggest that Jeremy Corbyn has become the candidate to beat. A man whose previous highest public office was chairman of the Haringey council planning committee three decades ago might, in six weeks’ time, be leader of the opposition and Labour’s putative candidate for prime minister. With hindsight, the surprise is that we have been surprised. We should have seen this coming. The stresses induced by austerity and a revolt against political elites have been splitting the left all over Europe. From Greece to Spain to Germany, the traditional governing parties of the centre-left are being challenged by insurgent populist movements from the redder end of the spectrum. In the case of Greece, the old order has been supplanted by the new, though not with positive results for that unhappy country.

...Since its birth, British Labour has been a rainbow coalition of socialists, social democrats and social liberals. It has been a church broad enough to encompass those on the most leftwing side of the aisle who think there is a lot to admire about the thinking of Karl Marx to people on the far side of the other aisle who might call themselves liberal centrists or even Christian democrats if they were in a different country. The Labour church has a history of doing the splits. It did so in the 1930s. Again in the 1950s. And again in the 1980s. You could almost say we were due for one.

...Those with a vote in the contest who are still unsure which Labour party they should be backing have been provided with a clarifying test by Dave Ward, the general secretary of the Communication Workers Union. Announcing the CWU’s endorsement of the MP for Islington North, Mr Ward declared that the union’s executive had acted on medical advice: “There is a virus within the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote.” “The virus” being the Blairites.

...The big truth that is being exposed by this battle is that Labour is really two parties and they can no longer stand each other’s company. The social democrats despair that those to the left always pull Labour into suicidally unelectable positions from which it takes years to recover before the party sees power again. The socialists rage that the pragmatists make so many compromises in the pursuit of power that it ends up not being worth it. Really, they’d be happier if they could go their separate ways. Then the electorate could choose between an offer from the centre-left and one from further left.

You Can Always Plaster Harper's Face on a Billboard

Check this out.  Dogwood Initiative's election billboard.  Awesome.

Think About It. Are You Really Okay With This?

The folks at National Geographic want a moment of your attention.  They want you to absorb what's happening on our Arctic doorstep.  To do that they've produced this GIF showing the decline in Arctic ice coverage over the astonishingly brief, 15-year period from 1999 to 2014.

What the graphic can't depict is that not only has the ice declined severely in area it has also greatly thinned.  What once was thick ice is now thin ice. Yes, we're on thin ice - in several ways.

The Guardian Sums Up Last Night's Debates.

Oh hell, what do the Brits know about Canadian politics? Based on the debates I watched, I'd say quite a bit.  Here's the conclusion in its entirety:

And, we’re done.

The immediate winner tonight is Elizabeth May. But the strategic victor is Tom Mulcair’s NDP.

Under attack from the other three parties, Harper withered. But while May rose to fill the room, and Mulcair’s calm demeanor gave him the last word over and over again, Trudeau failed to hit the near-impossible moving target he had to hit to put his party back in contention.

The Guardian Nails What's at Stake in Canada's Federal Election

"The October elections offer Canada a chance 

to return to the country’s best traditions"

That pretty much sums up what this election means to Canadians - a chance to return to our nation's best traditions that have been trampled underfoot and maliciously sullied by the Conservatives and their leader, Stevie-Joe Harper.

Under Mr Harper, Canada has not only moved to the right in almost every area of policy but has entered an era of highly calibrated, money-driven negative campaigning at odds with the courtesy that is one of the most attractive of Canadian qualities. So the result matters, obviously for Canada itself, but also for a world that has long been missing the special role it used to play on the international scene.

Money, its uses and its abuses, runs like a thread through Mr Harper’s time in power. At the very beginning, a scandal over the diversion of government funds under the then Liberal government helped him into office in 2006. Ironically, it then turned out that his Conservative party had itself been breaking electoral laws on spending during that campaign. Forming another minority government after the 2008 election, he began dismantling Canada’s system of political party subsidies, a policy that benefits the Conservatives, who have the largest base of wealthy donors, and puts other parties, particularly the Liberals, at a financial disadvantage.

...Domestically Mr Harper has tried to move Canada away from its social democratic tradition, reducing government spending and services, privatising government agencies,cutting public health. He has gagged government scientists and civil servants, is bringing in new internal security laws, and made Canada a less open society. Internationally he has made the Canada that begged to differ (with Britain on Suez, on Vietnam with America, for example) and the Canada that was a pillar of peacekeeping and the United Nations a distant memory. And his particularly passionate identification with Israel has lost Canada the “honest broker” status that it arguably enjoyed in the Middle East in the past.

The political contest in Canada this time is particularly difficult to predict since the three big parties each have about 30% in popular support. Any of the three could end up in government, alone or in coalition. But we may be permitted to hope there is now a chance that something of the old Canada, committed to moderation and multiculturalism at home and to multilateralism and cooperation abroad, will re-emerge from the fray.

Amen to that.

If They Can Call Me an Extremist, I Can Return the Favour and Call Them Terrorists.

In Stevie Harper's dystopian vision of Canada, I am a dangerous extremist, a radical, a lurking eco-terrorist because I, like so many coastal British Columbians are resolved to oppose the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipeline initiatives.

But who is the real terrorist? Whose actions imperil what? Who is seeking to inflict irreparable harm on my countrymen, both today and into the future? Who is truly in service to foreign interests?

There are a great many of us opposed to bitumen trafficking as even more odious than Canada's shameful history of flogging asbestos to the Third World decades after we had outlawed its use at home. Asbestos harmed those who came into immediate contact with it, who breathed its carcinogenic fibres into their lungs. Bitumen, like other high-carbon fossil fuels, isn't that restrictive. It generates CO2 emissions that get into our atmosphere and into our oceans where it can and will wreak havoc for centuries. It is the stuff of mass extinction events and that is terrorism writ large, as large as it gets.

Terrorism is no longer confined to car bombs in markets or airplanes flown into buildings - a dozen slaughtered here, a hundred there, a few thousand over there. No, this sort of terrorism will inflict suffering on many hundreds of millions and bring death to countless hundreds of millions, perhaps billions more.  Their terrorism is nihilistic, the Butcher's Bill utterly apocalyptic.

My variety of what is smeared as dangerous radicalism is practiced in public - in spoken words, letters and demonstrations - in the exercise of the most fundamental democratic rights. No wonder they find it so alarming.

Real terrorism is covert, hidden from scrutiny. It is the sort practiced by the surveillance state in collusion with foreign corporate interests that, together, use intimidation and lawfare to suppress dissent and even send tax investigators out to cripple those who defy them. It is the corruption of the system and its regulators such as the National Energy Board that has been quietly transformed into a vassal of the fossil fuelers. It is the silent government by fiat that strips the country of every essential protection be it in the form of regulations governing safe navigation and marine habitat to gutting our Coast Guard and Fisheries monitors. You know it's terrorism when you're legitimately afraid of what it's doing to you and what lies ahead.

Be afraid.  Today's real terrorists are real and they hold the levers of power.

Truth from the Sea

If there's one thing climate change deniers steer well clear of, it's the state of our oceans.

They confine their lies to cherry-picked data about global warming of the atmosphere, a narrative that still has to be bolstered with mighty lies oft repeated, but they know not to mess with oceanic reality.

None of us gets out of school without being taught that our oceans cover 70% of Earth's surface. Terrestrial life has to make do with the 30% of terra firma left over. Yeah, okay, fair enough.

Water doesn't lie and it really doesn't provide much cover for liars either.  It's an awfully good measure for we know what it is today and, from frozen ice cores, we know what it was two and three centuries ago and what it was millions of years ago when water became ice embedding with it all sorts of information including its age and even what was going on in the atmosphere the last time it was liquid. My, my, my.

We know from highschool chemistry class how litmus paper works.  We experimented with how it reacts to changes in pH.  You gotta love that phenolphtalein, don'cha?  It makes it easy to compare this sample of water from today to another sample from two centuries ago to yet another sample that's a million years old. And when you do that you find the clear fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming, man-made climate change in the industrial era.

It's too bad we don't reflect more on Earth's water when we discuss climate change because that powerfully impacts the narrative.

The world's oceans have already become about 30 per cent more acidic since pre-industrial times as seas absorb about one quarter or more of the excess carbon dioxide, triggering a chemical reaction. Combined with heat stress caused by warming waters, the rising acidity levels are already affecting complex ecosystems from plankton to shellfish and corals.

Researchers at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research examined the prospects for massive geo-engineering efforts to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and say it would take centuries for the oceans to become less acidic.

Assuming carbon dioxide removal could be ramped up to 90 gigatonnes a year – or about twice current annual emissions – oceans would not be brought back to pre-1750 levels until at least 2700, the researchers said in a paper published this week in Nature Climate Change journal.

"Geo-engineering measures are currently being debated as a kind of last resort to avoid dangerous climate change – either in the case that policymakers find no agreement to cut CO₂ emissions, or to delay the transformation of our energy systems," Sabine Mathesius, a Potsdam Institute researcher, said in a statement.

"[I]n a business-as-usual scenario of unabated emissions, even if the CO₂ in the atmosphere would later on be reduced to the pre-industrial concentration, the acidity in the oceans could still be more than four times higher than the pre-industrial level," Ms Mathesius said. "It would take many centuries to get back into balance with the atmosphere."

Pete Strutton, an associate professor at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, said the paper showed "what we should already realise".

"What's needed is aggressive efforts to reduce emissions now, rather than aggressive programs in 50 years' time to remove it," Professor Strutton said.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a co-author of the paper and also the senior scientific adviser to Pope Francis for his recent climate encyclical, said "the chemical echo of this century's CO₂ pollution will reverberate for thousands of years".

"If we do not implement emissions reductions measures in line with the 2 degrees Celsius target in time, we will not be able to preserve ocean life as we know it," Professor Schellnhuber said.

Sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it?  That's because it f__king well is! Forget the atmosphere.  Forget the droughts and floods. Forget the severe storm events of ever increasing frequency, intensity and duration. Put that all aside for a minute and think of oceans that are going to become four times more acidic than pre-industrial levels and, even with Herculean efforts to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide, still won't be back to normal until 2700.

Think of that and then ask yourself how hard it is for your political leader of choice to keep a straight face and promise he'll introduce carbon taxes to somehow sort this all out.

The warning is stark.  We need "aggressive efforts to reduce emissions now." You haven't got a chance of doing that while these Sneaky Pete, Petro-Pimps talk carbon taxes out of one side of their mouths and massive increases in bitumen extraction out of the other.  Nah, they're just f__king with ya because they know they can get away with it.  And they're right.

 

About Those Republican Debates Tomorrow Night

The thoughtful folks at AlterNet have put together a little drinking game for tomorrow night's Republican debate on FOX News.

WARNING - this game is potentially lethal. See if you can source a donor liver before participating. Each game must be overseen by at least one designated driver.

I'll Bet Harper's Crazy Glad He Sacked Most Department of Fisheries and Oceans Researchers

"What the plebs don't know won't hurt them me"

The peckerhead who currently rules Canada in the guise of a prime minister must be thanking his lucky stars that he doesn't have to worry about nuisance reports from federal government scientists about the massive algae bloom along the Pacific coast of North America from California to Alaska.

Sideshow Steve Harper, as part of his scheme to work over British Columbia in preparation for bitumen supertanker traffic, gutted fishery and navigation regulations and shut down entire sections of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the folks who might tell tales out of school.

By happy Harper coincidence there's no one around to discuss "the Blob" or its ramifications and its connection to climate change.  The name refers to huge tract of ocean in the northeast Pacific that's about 3 degrees Celsius warmer than normal. It's widely believed that the Blob is linked to climate change and is responsible for this monster algae bloom that girdles the coast and is up to 64 km. wide and, in some places, almost 200-metres deep.

CBC News has an interesting report on the  algae bloom and what's being done to investigate it. The report is full of quotes from scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), state officials from Washington and Oregon, and a number of research scientists. What's conspicuously missing is any information from Canadian sources, presumably because Harper has seen to it that they're an endangered species.

As If Any Canadian Needs a Good Reason to Turf Harper

Robert Reich: Trump + Sanders = Looming Revolt.

Berkley prof, political economist, pundit and served presidents Ford, Carter and Clinton, Robert Reich sees revolt looming in America.


"He can't possibly win the nomination," is the phrase heard most often when Washington insiders mention either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.

Yet as enthusiasm for the bombastic billionaire and the socialist senior continues to build within each party, the political establishment is mystified.

They don't understand that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the "ruling class" of insiders that have dominated Washington for more than three decades.

In two very different ways, Trump and Sanders are agents of this revolt. 

What's new is the degree of anger now focused on those who have had power over our economic and political system since the start of the 1980s.

Included are presidents and congressional leaders from both parties, along with their retinues of policy advisors, political strategists, and spin-doctors.

Most have remained in Washington even when not in power, as lobbyists, campaign consultants, go-to lawyers, financial bundlers, and power brokers.

The other half of the ruling class comprises the corporate executives, Wall Street chiefs, and multi-millionaires who have assisted and enabled these political leaders -- and for whom the politicians have provided political favors in return.

 ...We've witnessed self-dealing on a monumental scale -- starting with the junk-bond takeovers of the 1980s, followed by the Savings and Loan crisis, the corporate scandals of the early 2000s (Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom), and culminating in the near meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 and the taxpayer-financed bailout.

Along the way, millions of Americans lost their jobs their savings, and their homes.

...The game seems rigged -- riddled with abuses of power, crony capitalism, and corporate welfare.

...The resulting fury at ruling class has taken two quite different forms.

On the right are the wreckers. The Tea Party, which emerged soon after the Wall Street bailout, has been intent on stopping government in its tracks and overthrowing a ruling class it sees as rotten to the core.

Its Republican protégés in Congress and state legislatures have attacked the Republican establishment. And they've wielded the wrecking balls of government shutdowns, threats to default on public debt, gerrymandering, voter suppression through strict ID laws, and outright appeals to racism.

Donald Trump is their human wrecking ball. The more outrageous his rants and putdowns of other politicians, the more popular he becomes among this segment of the public that's thrilled by a bombastic, racist, billionaire who sticks it to the ruling class.

On the left are the rebuilders. The Occupy movement, which also emerged from the Wall Street bailout, was intent on displacing the ruling class and rebuilding our political-economic system from the ground up.

Occupy didn't last but it put inequality on map. And the sentiments that fueled Occupy are still boiling.

Bernie Sanders personifies them. The more he advocates a fundamental retooling of our economy and democracy in favor of average working people, the more popular he becomes among those who no longer trust the ruling class to bring about necessary change.

Yet despite the growing revolt against the ruling class, it seems likely that the nominees in 2016 will be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. After all, the ruling class still controls America.

But the revolt against the ruling class won't end with the 2016 election, regardless.

I expect former pres. Jimmy Carter would agree that revolt might be the last best chance to recover America's democracy. Carter recently denounced the incestuous relationship between corporatism and America's political caste as subverting democracy.

"It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell."
  

The good news is that America's descent into oligarchy is marked by the rise of a transactional government that closely parallels the decline of the Roman Senate in the years prior to the collapse of their empire.

On Bullets Dodged - For Now

Just back from a motorcycle tour of the island from Gold River to Port Renfrew in the southwest and back to my place on the east side.  You don't have to get too far off the beaten path to get a clear understanding of what's going on.  The most striking observation was how perilously dry this rainforest has become - everywhere.

Dried up reservoirs, lakes with that "climate change ring" along the shorelines, creek beds down to remarkably clean but bare rocks that were once washed with cold, crystal clear waters.  You don't have to get more than fifteen to twenty miles in from the ocean before temperatures soar.  You look around and it's all a giant forest fire waiting to break out.  Even on the highest peaks not a trace of snow remains.

It now looks certain that we're in for a very powerful El Nino later this year. That brings coastal BC a mild, dry winter - the very last thing we need.

The island has dodged a bullet - so far - but the odds aren't on our side.  Then, on my return, I read an article from TomDispatch.  This line struck an awful chord:

When fire can eat a rainforest in a relatively cool climate,

you know the Earth is beginning to burn.

The article concerns forest fires in Washington's Olympic Peninsula, south of Victoria.

The wettest rainforest in the continental United States had gone up in flames and the smoke was so thick, so blanketing, that you could see it miles away. Deep in Washington’s Olympic National Park, the aptly named Paradise Fire, undaunted by the dampness of it all, was eating the forest alive and destroying an ecological Eden. In this season of drought across the West, there have been far bigger blazes but none quite so symbolic or offering quite such grim news. It isn’t the size of the fire (though it is the largest in the park’s history), nor its intensity. It’s something else entirely -- the fact that it shouldn’t have been burning at all.

We're no strangers to drought. Dry conditions are normal from July through the end of September. The forests are usually well soaked during the rest of the year and we normally have snowpack on our mountains well into July, some higher peaks into August if not year round.  We didn't get the heavy winter rains this year, nor the vital snowpack they bring.

Towns, their officials unprepared for climate change, are running out of water. No one has been willing to invest in infrastructure (reservoirs) to capture the runoff during heavy rain events when we do get them. Yet they're still willing to issue building permits to developers even as they cannot provide water security to existing residents.

Growing up in central Canada, people would say, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity."  People in the Great Lakes region don't need that explained to them. I'm not sure if the term is still used but it used to be called the "humidex" factor. It could make a 30C day feel like it was 36C.

How does 73 degrees Celsius strike you?  

In the Iranian city Bandar Mahshahr, the mercury soared to 46 C on Friday as an unprecedented heat wave enveloped much of the Middle East. With humidity, however, the air felt more like 73 C, according to AccuWeather.

A port city located in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran, Bandar Mahshahr has its proximity to the Persian Gulf to blame for the incredible temperature readings, AccuWeather meteorologist Anthony Sagliani said.

"Around the Persian Gulf, where water temperatures are in the lower to middle 90s [30s C], the extreme heat combines with incredibly high humidity to produce astounding apparent temperatures," he said.

Did you get that? Water temperatures in the Persian Gulf in the 30s (Celsius). Normal body temperature is only 37C. You might also want to steer clear of Baghdad.

To the west, temperatures also reached above 50 C this week in Iraq, with a reading of 52 C in Baghdad on Thursday.

The relentless heat prompted the Iraqi government to implement a mandatory four-day holiday starting on Thursday. Residents were also urged to stay out of the sun and drink plenty of water.

Unlike other countries in the region, Iraq lacks beaches, and travel restrictions make it difficult for people to escape the sweltering heat, leaving many — even those fortunate enough to live in their homes — with limited options for cooling off. Some swim in rivers and irrigation canals, while others spend the days in air-conditioned shopping malls.

Climate change is here, kids, and it's here to stay.  From heat waves to sea level rise, from droughts to heavy floods, we've moved to a new climate that is going to be immensely destructive, disruptive and dislocative.  This is no longer a threat of something that might happen in the future. It's happening. It's here and it's worsening. And we're not doing a damned thing about it. Not a thing.

We're acting as though we're still in the 80s, pretending that we've got thirty years to deal with this.  We don't. We don't have thirty years. We don't have ten years.

We know what comes out of these crises. It's called "disaster capitalism" and we know what creates the conditions that disaster capitalists need to thrive - government indifference and a refusal to act.  Right now the doors are wide open, waiting for the disaster capitalists to drive straight in.

So who is prepared to act - Justin? Tom? What have you been hearing?  The usual bullshit about carbon taxes, is that it?  What's that strange noise? Why it's the sound of them jerking your chain.

Update: I went out yesterday late afternoon to refuel the Great Yellow Beast and as I rode out of my garage I heard an unmistakable sound overhead, our last remaining Martin Mars water bomber immediately overhead.  The thing is so huge it can appear to be crawling through the air.  On the island that plane is associated with our salvation from these damned fires.

Oh Dear. One of the Last Credible Justifications for Big Game Hunting... Well, Maybe We Shouldn't Go There.

One of the strongest arguments big game hunters can raise is when they're killing animals as necessary for population control. Sometimes natural predators can't keep prey species in balance, usually after trophy hunters have killed off the predators. Then we may need to "cull the herd" to keep burgeoning populations under control before their sheer numbers devastate many other species.

Wait just a second. What species is the biggest predator of them all, the planet's one true Apex predator?  Why, of course, that would be us - mankind. We're already devastating many species at a voracious rate, enough that we've pretty much killed off half of the life on Earth over just the past three to four decades.

We're the biggest, perhaps only, genuine threat that imperils our planet's biodiversity leading to the collapse of many species as we near a critical loss of biodiversity that could doom us all to a very miserable way of life. We're the species that seems to have triggered a genuine, mass-extermination event. Aren't we the herd that most needs culling?

We could begin with a pilot project.  We'll put tracking collars around the necks of trophy hunters and set them loose on special ranches where they can be "taken" by those willing to shell out, say, $50,000 for the privilege. Permit holders will be able to "take" their trophy by rifle, bow and arrow, or even just the tires of a giant 4X4.

Then, maybe after we've disposed of the Walter Palmers of this world, we'll realize that culling the human herd isn't such a good idea after all especially when there are other ways to solve our overpopulation problem in just a couple of generations.

It's Come to This

I guess "666" was taken.

Of Israelis and Palestinians and Our Fairy Tales

Sure, it's just a cartoon, but it goes to the heart of why we're all so screwed up about Israel and Palestine. We've been fed a biblical fairy tale and we've made it our very own.

This Land is mine from Religioten und Co. on Vimeo.
Grandioser Abriss der Geschichte eines leidenden Landes!

Christians have their Bible, Jews their Torah, Muslims the Koran and each justifies the endless slaughter of innocents in the "Holy Land."

Why Doesn't Harper Erect a Statue to Canada's Very Own Bard?

Seriously.

The Best Consolation Prize - EVER

When it comes to the three clown princes vying to form Canada's next government I'm a "none of the above" voter.  That said, it would give me considerable comfort on election eve to see Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness, Sideshow Steve Harper become the first Conservative prime minister to screw it all up so badly that he lost to the first New Democrat prime minister (even if he is a closet liberal - and, Dippers, you all know he is).  It would also give me pleasure to see the Liberals, having abandoned the centre-left, to be parked in the wilderness - exiled from Sussex Drive, banished from Stornoway - forced to seek refuge in some dank backroom at the Motel 6 out on the Gloucester highway. That, for them, is no misfortune. It's a place well earned and entirely deserved.

I will begrudge the NDP their win for it will consolidate their abandonment of the Left at a time when Canada most needs a strong voice for labour and working class Canadians. You can pretend until your eyeballs explode that your team has it covered. They don't. Mulcair will claim that turf because he remains slightly left of today's conservative-lite Liberals but he's a consummate liar and a pathological snake oil salesman whose type those old enough have seen too often before.

You (We) have to recalibrate the scales, the balance between labour and capital, recognizing that as fundamental to any viable liberal democracy.  None of our political chimps is connecting these dots.  Perhaps that's because they see what that would mean to government and their personal futures.