Is Harper Ready to Hang Up His Spurs?

Is Stephen Harper ready to pack it in?

Despite his endless flaws and shortcomings, Steve Harper has outgamed every Liberal team since Martin's.

I don't think Harper will be run out of town. I think he'll leave on his own terms. I would expect that sooner rather than later. I think Harper's horribly inept behaviour lately reflects a guy who's definitely not playing his "A" game.

What would possibly keep Harper in the job except some real prospect of winning a majority and that's not in the cards.

He's so far behind the curve on global warming that, even with the best and brightest at EnviroCan utterly gagged, he can't hide it much longer. He has bought as much time as possible. He's done an excellent job for the Oil Patch. It's not his fault that world prices cratered with the global meltdown. But time is running out.

Harper's hand will soon be forced on the climate change issue. He's going to have to set realistic and meaningful targets and he'll have to begin introducing measures to meet those. Other nations, particularly the United States, will be setting the bar and Canada is going to have to follow suit. To Harper's base that will be like shoving cloves of garlic down a vampire's throat. Do you really believe he, or the right wing of his party, want to be the people to deliver that up to their followers?

What have they got to lose by losing to Ignatieff right now? MI's already shown that he's willing to leave Canada's political centre far to the right (mission accomplished, point- Mr. Harper) and he'll be easy to attack as the successor to Dion when he has no choice but to introduce some form of carbon emissions controls.

Copenhagen is but six months away, the End Times are nigh. I think Harp's ready to pack his bags on a moment's notice and I don't think the Libs are remotely ready to deal with the vacuum he'll bequeath them.

California's Constitutional Crisis - Popular Revolt?

California's state government has ground to a halt, utterly dysfunctional. The state that proudly proclaims it has the 7th largest economy in the world can't pay its bills. A very small group of taxpayers have pushed the legislature over a cliff.

The state's constitution is booby-trapped. If the government needs to raise taxes, it takes a 2/3rds vote of the legislature to approve the budget. In a sharply-divided and intensely partisan legislature, that's left the state with a $23-billion revenue shortfall. If the legislature won't approve a tax hike the government can go to the voters in a "special election." That's what it did. 19% turned out. A majority of that 19% said no tax hikes. Paralysis.

Let's face it. It's really hard to get people to get out to the polls to support a tax hike but it's an awful lot easier to get people to the polls to reject a tax hike. You're almost guaranteed to get more to say no than to say yes. And, as this case shows, even 10% of the electorate can bring the state's government to a standstill. Right over the cliff.

But now there's a popular revolt underway. Left and right, voters are fed up with their legislature and their constitution. As the LA Times reports, the public are beginning to take matters into their own hands:

The unraveling budget has spurred groups of the political left, right and center to press full speed ahead with campaigns for what each considers the remedy for dysfunction.

A bipartisan organization sponsored by several foundations is finalizing a menu of potential solutions. Those are expected to include a change in budgeting practices and a possible shift of state-run programs such as health, education and welfare to local governments that may enjoy more public trust.

A deep-pocketed Bay Area business group that includes Google and Yahoo is pressing ahead with plans for a constitutional convention. In that scenario, 400 California residents of all stripes would ponder the state's problems in a months-long session and draft a new blueprint for government that presumably would land on the statewide ballot.

...The last true constitutional convention took place in 1878. Progressive-era reforms meant to overcome the power of railroad barons led to changes in 1911 that ushered in the initiative process. And a commission toiled for more than a dozen years in the 1960s and '70s, enacting a slew of constitutional revisions that included the birth of a full-time Legislature.

..."People are going to be looking for reforms at least up through next year's election," said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political scientist. "That will keep the pressure on the Legislature to do something."

Ideas for change abound: a more business-like budget process, election adjustments to lure more moderates, modification of term limits, a higher bar for approval of initiatives.

As a foreigner with a genuine fondness for California, all I can say is "amen."

Malaise in LibLand

I finally got around to reading Jim Travers piece on Michael Ignatieff in the Toronto Star.

Curious that, when the rest of us were saying these very same things, we were attacked by various IgLibs for being heretical and disloyal to the party.

Our critics gushed and swooned over the new guy while he put his stamp on the Liberal Party of Canada, transforming it into what Travers quite rightly labels "conservative-lite." Liberal, indeed!

The Eaton boys were no Timothy E., David and Lenny have shown they're no Izzy, Justin is no Pierre and Ian is no Keith. I can't imagine Keith Davey allowing Pierre Trudeau to come out with something as boneheaded as boasting about putting Harper "on probation." It's not inspiring, it's not even funny. It just makes you cringe when those words come out of Mr. Ignatieff's mouth. Yet it's even featured on the party's web page. What possible advantage is to be gained from constantly reminding everyone that you're all hat and no cattle.

Leave things like Gaza and the Tar Sands out of it for a while. Where Iggy really was tested and failed miserably was when Harper managed to get the GG to prorogue parliament. He and his advisors and his caucus had two precious months to get down to business and work furiously on a stimulus and recovery budget proposal of their own. They needed to be ready when parliament returned with a budget proposal that envisioned putting "new" money into the economy on any of the long list of genuinely needed infrastructure investments that would actually generate wealth for the country and the Canadian taxpayer when the spending costs fell due.

But Ignatieff used that precious two month window of opportunity to finish writing a book. What were his advisors thinking? How did they let that happen?

When parliament returned Ignatieff was empty-handed. He brought no grand vision to lay before the public as a real alternative. Instead he had to support what I labelled a pinata budget - throwing new decks on cottages or shouldering the tax burden for municipal works projects already on the books - that did precious little to stimulate or recover and would provide no lasting investment to offset the costs of the squandered money.

Snookered by the prime minister, Ignatieff supported the pinata budget and then puffed himself up mightily and pronounced the Harper government was "on probation." What a miserable farce.

I'm still willing to support Michael Ignatieff the moment he grasps the idea that it's the Liberal Party of Canada, not the Ignatieff Party of Canada, and that the key word is Liberal. The guy is unquestionably bright but he does need skilled handlers and he needs to listen to them.

Canada cannot afford two inept leaders. There are great challenges looming that we're going to have to address, challenges that will require real vision, the sort of vision that was nowhere to be seen in the pinata budget. I believe that Michael Ignatieff is capable of that vision if he stops screwing around pandering to everybody and starts acting like a liberal.

Pakistan Intrigue and Conspiracy - the Mind Reels

We get mail. Today it came in a contact from Pak Report claiming that Cheney, the CIA and India's foreign intelligence agency, RAW or Research and Analysis Wing, conspired to topple Pervez Musharraf. India, it claims, had its own motives but Cheney, it claims, was furious that Musharraf was not buying the US backed plans for the Central Asian pipeline but was, instead, favouring China - a result that could have been disastrous for companies like Halliburton and Unocal. Pak Report even hints at a possible Canadian connection.

Is this true? That's impossible to say but this is, after all, the very heartland of the "Great Game."

http://pakreport.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/some-facts-about-lawyers-movement-of-pakistan/

Seymour Hersh - Still Punching, Still Connecting

Last March, Seymour Hersh stood alone when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that Dick Cheney had operated a secret assassination squad that he kept hidden from Congressional oversight.

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. ...Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

Hersh's revelation prompted the expected raised eyebrows and high level denials - pretty much the same thing he got four decades ago when he first wrote of the My Lai massacre. And now, as then, it turns out he was right on the money.

Now the New York Times is reporting that Cheney ran the squad through the CIA but it never was successful. The assassination squad reported by Hersh was run through the Pentagon's Special Ops Command and did, he claims, leave bodies in is wake.

Hersh told the Daily Beast that the Bush regime was very active in running covert military actions in the guise of intelligence operations not requiring government oversight. Hersh claims Bush even gloated about this in his 2003 State of the Union speech when he said:

"All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."

Whatever Happened to Liberalism?

What happened to liberalism? Where did we lose our way? How did we get to where we are today?

What does it mean to be Liberal without being liberal? To my simple mind it means bugger all. It means defining the party not in the context of the opposition, but on core beliefs.

This is Canada, not the United States. M.I. pay attention. You're not going to get far by abandoning your party's traditions in order to squeeze out votes from hither and yon by pandering.

Asbestos is bad, Asbestos is good, no Asbestos is bad. That kind of feeble, flickering conviction belongs in some bus station mens' room. And you're to be the successor to Trudeau, the leader to breathe new life into the Liberal Party of Canada? What a dark farce.

Look Michael, this isn't all about you. "You" haven't been able to sell your brand very well have you? Even as Canada descends into a serious recession under hapless Tory mismanagement, you're barely tied in the polls. Sorry pal but that's failure writ large.

But there might still be an "out." Maybe you could look at the real leaders who preceded you, those who made a difference to today's Canada, figure out why the Liberal party was first choice among Canadians under those lesser humans and - shudder - try to be a Liberal.

Or not. You have assembled a more than respectable legion of sycophants and hangers on that you might even, if Harper does something to actually put his razor hand to his own throat, and by default let you squeak in as a minority prime minister.

Sorry Mike but Canadians want and are waiting for a real Liberal to lead them out of this mess. They've had a good look at you and they don't see the goods.

"Chiquita Pete" Kent and the Great Honduran Coup

According to Ashley Holly's article in The Tyee, Canada under the Conservative Junta of Estaban Harpero and Pedro Kent is backing their fellow junta plotters who just pulled off the coup in Honduras. It is definitely worth a read:

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/07/09/ShameOnCanada/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=130709

India Goes Dry - A World In Peril

Our leaders may not want to talk about the environmental cataclysm setting in around the world but those living with it are more than willing to talk.

I've been exchanging e-mails recently with an elderly Indian woman, a well-educated and highly intelligent individual. She's eager to discuss what lies in store for her fellow countrymen and mankind in general as they confront the challenges that can no longer be avoided.

Perhaps the greatest problem facing Indians today is disruption of their freshwater resources. They're now experiencing a triple-whammy. The Himalayan glaciers, whose headwaters supply India's key agricultural rivers, are in headlong retreat. As National Public Radio reported a couple of months ago, India's "green revolution" is beginning to teeter because it relied of massive overexploitation of the country's groundwater reserves. Now it's the missing monsoon.

The life-giving monsoon ought to have arrived five weeks ago but the Pacific has just been hit by a massive El Nino so much larger and different than previous El Ninos that they've renamed it El Nino Modoki. These ocean phenomenon usually disrupt rainfall to places like India and Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald reports alarm is spreading through India:

There are reports that monsoon-dependent crops in the north of the country have already been spoiled because of very hot weather and a lack of rain. Fears of a below-par monsoon in some of the most important farming districts have triggered a sharp rise in fruit and vegetable prices. This threatens to hit poor families the hardest.

The Meteorological Department, which issues a daily monsoon report, says the monsoon made a comeback last week but it admits rain has been "scanty" in some of the most productive food growing areas.

The fitful monsoon has created havoc in India's biggest city, Mumbai. Over the past fortnight the metropolis has been plunged into chaos by flash-flooding caused by heavy downpours. However, a lack of rainfall in the city's catchment areas has created a critical water shortage.

Mumbai's civic authority is so worried that it imposed a 30 per cent cut in town water last week and has stopped supplying water to non-essential services such as swimming pools.
There are reports the city may have only 20 days of water left unless the catchment areas receive more rain.

While Mumbai may have only 20-days of water stocks remaining, my friend, Salima, tells me that many smaller cities ran out of water in early April. Residents there who can afford it have to buy water that's trucked in which means water for drinking and perhaps some for cooking but none for sanitation or hygiene. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what that will mean if this continues even for a matter of months longer.

India's government, however, is still forging ahead and is targetting for economic growth this year of 5%. What I'm told suggests they're running on autopilot.

To give you a clearer grasp of India's predicament, consider this from The Guardian:

It was a little after 8pm when the water started flowing through the pipe running beneath the dirt streets of Bhopal's Sanjay Nagar slum. After days without a drop of water, the Malviya family were the first to reach the hole they had drilled in the pipe, filling what containers they had as quickly as they could. Within minutes, three of them were dead, hacked to death by angry neighbours who accused them of stealing water.

In Bhopal, and across much of northern India, a late monsoon and the driest June for 83 years are exacerbating the effects of a widespread drought and setting neighbour against neighbour in a desperate fight for survival.

...In Bhopal, where 100,000 people rely solely on the water tankers that shuttle across the city, fights break out regularly. In the Pushpa Nagar slum, the arrival of the first tanker for two days prompted a frantic scramble, with men jostling women and children in their determination to get to the precious liquid first.

Young men scrambled on to the back of the tanker, jamming green plastic pipes through the hole on the top, passing them down to their wives or mothers waiting on the ground to siphon the water off into whatever they had managed to find: old cooking oil containers were popular, but even paint pots were pressed into service. A few children crawled beneath the tanker in the hope of catching the spillage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/12/india-water-supply-bhopal

Steve to Benny - It's Wafer Time

Gee yer Holiness, thanks for this awful swell pen. But look what I got for you - a wafer! Picked it up the other day just for you, special like.

All I Want From Michael Ignatieff

He's the leader of the Official Opposition and therefore it's his job to press the government to do necessary things it hasn't done or at least point out what the government has failed to do.


I want Mr. Ignatieff to bring every bit of pressure he can muster on the Harper government to do a very simple thing the British government did for its people just last month. Very simple but of enormous potential importance.


In June, Britain's environment secretary released a report on how much climate change is in store for that country based on existing carbon emissions. No hocus-pocus stuff speculating on what might or might not happen to slash greenhouse gas emissions in ten years or twenty years or forty years. Just a hardnosed, realistic look at what's almost certainly coming.


The report indicated that, by 2080, about every place in Britain will reach the two degree threshhold that we keep talking about. It also noted that some parts in the south, including London itself, could see temperature increases upwards of six degrees celsius.


The idea behind releasing that report was to get the population and their local governments thinking about their future environment so that they could begin to plan and prepare for it. By looking at a conservative estimate for 2080 you can work back to identify what might arrive by 2030 or 2050. Those are real numbers for much of the population. Then they can begin to examine and implement their options for adaptation and remediation.


We're not going to get that sort of potentially lifesaving information from our environment experts because Stephen Harper has their ministry effectively gagged. We'll get whatever climate change information he wants to give us and, based on what he's given us so far, that's a lot of nothing.


Somebody has to tear that gag off our best scientists at Environment Canada and who is more responsible for leading that battle than the leader of the opposition? Nobody. It's Michael Ignatieff's job to do just that and Britain's environment secretary has given our opposition a very powerful weapon to turn on Stephen Harper. Why can't the Canadian government do at least as much for our people as the British government has done for theirs? By what right does Stephen Harper choose to keep Canadians uninformed, even misinformed about this?


We're a big country. We have many regional environments and we'll all be affected somewhat differently. We have coastal environments, southern and northern, a mountainous region, a vast prairie, the Canadian Shield, and the Great Lakes basin. None of these is going to experience the same conditions. While we may have differing local environments, we are one people and we deserve to start getting some straight answers. Not political answers, scientific answers.

CanWest and the Norwegian Blue

Izzy Asper built CanWest into a media empire with a book value of two billion dollars.

Izzy's gone, Lenny's at the helm and CanWest is now worth (optimistically) all of seven million dollars. When you're in hock to your creditors to the tune of four billion dollars, seven million book value isn't such a good thing.

CanWest has just announced a net loss of 110-million or 62 cents a share for the quarter ended May 31. Globeinvestor.com showed Canwest shares opening yesterday at at 7 cents, hitting a low of 5.5 cents and closing at 11-cents.

Asper, reprising the role of Michael Palin in the pet shop, is struggling bravely to convince CanWest's creditors that the company is alive, unlike that Norwegian Blue parrot.

This is Rich. The Guy Who Took a Dump on Canada's Kyoto Commitments Calls other G8 Members Slackers.

The man is a tool, a complete tool. I guess he's got his nearest and dearest much too terrified to intervene and hand him a mirror. It's obvious from how he surrounds himself with bellicose arrogant flakes like Dimitri Soudas, specimens from a proctology lecture lab.

Now, having screwed this country and all Canadians three way to his 6,000-year old Sunday with his economics acumen and having done everything in his power to sabotage our promise to the rest of the world in the Kyoto Accords, this self-styled "brightest man in the room" has decided to castigate other G8 leaders for, oh yeah, not delivering on promised aid to the world's poor and hungry.

Apparently oblivious to the fact that the greatest threat facing the weakest, poorest and least advantaged is the onslaught of climate change (think Tar Sands, Tar Sands, Tar Sands) the engorged sphincter on legs complained that Western leaders, "make commitments and we don't fulfil them. This undercuts the credibility of our process."

Excuse me but isn't this the same butthole who promised Canadians open and accountable government among so many other promises that now lie broken discarded like so many plastic bags and empty beer bottles in the Baja. I think the other G8 leaders might have noticed how Harpo soiled his own diaper today in his inane attack of Ignatieff. Chances are they've already dismissed SHPM as an empty suit, chump change.

Mmm, mmm, mmm - Three Hour Ribs!

I don't eat much meat. Pork mainly, beef rarely. I tend to stick with fish and chicken most of the year. Then summer arrives and everything goes straight to hell.

I love to barbeque. I fell off the wagon and wound up with a gas grill until my old CBC buddy (now CTV) Paul Workman gave me a proper dressing down over it, reminding me of our more aesthetic grilling days when we were frequently besotted young reporters. So, out went the gas bottle and in came the Weber kettle.

I'm not a snob but I do know the difference between properly kiln-charred 'lump' charcoal and that processed crap mixed with powdered coal and petroleum by-products that we call briquettes. Fortunately Canadian Tire stocks a generous supply of real charcoal, the type your Dad would have used (if you were a kid in the 50's).

A barbeque is all about spice. I make my own with an old-school mortar and pestle and a variety of herbs including unground mustard seed, fennel, chile seeds, cardomom, and an array of black, red and white pepper corns. A little kosher salt, some brown sugar, real gourmet chile powders, fresh cumin and top grade Hungarian paprika and the universe literally unfolds.

Then it's the fire, the secret ingredient - the magic. You want heat but it has to be indirect heat and very, very low. Under 180 is the key. That requires a lot of trial and error until you get to know how to build that fire and get it to just that right point. That's a perfect storm requiring the right amount of coals at the right point and continually controlled by regulating both the air intake and the upper vents.

A couple of hours before I'm ready to put meat on the grill I begin soaking the wood chips - mesquite or hickory or apple (the latter mainly for fish). When I'm ready to go, the chips go on the coals immediately before the meat reaches the grill. Then I put on the kettle top, adjust the vents and marvel at the smoke that pours out carrying that awesome aroma.

Now to do this right you have to check your fire every 20-30 minutes. You don't want it hot but you have to be careful lest it go out. Once you're through the first round, all that's needed is to add twigs from any one of the fruit trees in the yard. The last ten minutes, when the fire has really died down, it's time to add your homemade barbeque sauce and let it set in under the remaining heat and smoke.

Three hours later and it's time to reap what you have sowed. Ribs that are so moist, so tender that they genuinely do fall off the bone. You could eat that even if you had no teeth. And I can't even begin to describe the texture. The stuff melts.

So, tomorrow's another day. Maybe Beer Can Chicken? Pretty hard to beat that.

As an aside, I have done 5-hour ribs - more smoke, less heat and even 7-hour ribs. Unfortunately I'm not able to appreciate the difference. Three it is for me.

Something to Think About

This map shows the 10 least-densely populated countries in the world. Eight of the ten lie in regions that are expected to be particularly hard-hit by climte change. Hmm, that big, green one looks interesting.

Is Afghanistan Facing Revolt?

Forget about the Taliban and al Qaeda. This concerns ordinary Afghans and their anger toward their central government and, in particular, Hamid Karzai.

Afghans go to the polls next month to elect their president and Karzai is considered a shoo-in. That's got the American commander responsible for taming the southern provinces of Logar and Wardak warning of a possible, popular revolt. From The Guardian:

"I think the people down here are disgruntled with the government because there feeling is, look, 'I'm just right to the south, I'm frigging 40 miles away and you couldn't help me?'" said [Colonel David] Haight.

"I think that apathy is going to turn into some anger because when the administration doesn't change, and I don't think anyone believes now that Karzai is going to lose ... I think there is going to be frustration from people who realise there is not going to be a change. The bottom line is they are going to be thinking: 'four more years of this crap?'" Haight said.

...Widely blamed for much of the corruption in modern Afghanistan, Karzai has nonetheless succeeded in gaining the support of most of the country's most important ethnic and tribal power-brokers, including a number of unsavoury characters accused of human rights violations.

...There are also concerns about the independence of the election commission, which opponents accuse Karzai of stacking with loyalists.

Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister once tipped as a replacement for Kofi Annan as UN secretary general, is one of two leading opposition candidates. He is about to hit the campaign trail, but has limited access to television, no official protection, and no helicopter. He echoed Haight's view that the Karzai administration had failed to deliver on security: "In 2001 the Afghan people expected state-building and received bad governance and corruption. Now as a result of the failure of this government and international community, they are demonstrating again the desire for legitimate and accountable state institutions."

You don't have to go too far back in time to recall another nation wrestling with an insurgency and beset by a corrupt and detested government. It was popular discontent that kept the government of South Vietnam from ever consolidating its hold on the country, hastening its collapse.

Farewell Athabasca

Steve and Mike may think the Athabasca Tar Sands are pivotal to Canadian prosperity through the 21st century but not if what Steve was sincere in joining other G8 leaders on global warming.

An 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050. Let's face it - there is no way, none, that we're going to meet that promise without breaking our addiction to fossil fuels. Sorry Steve, Sorry Mike -- they've got to go. Leave the damned bitumen in the ground.

According to BBC News, reaching that target will require revolutionary change.

The commitment by G8 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 suggests that the leaders of those nations are serious about starting a fundamental revolution in the way society meets its energy needs.

Nothing else than a top-to-bottom refit can do the job.

Virtually all electricity generation will have to come from renewables, nuclear power or so-called "clean" coal - if that technology can be made to work on a commercial scale.

The amount of electricity generated in Western countries will have to rise significantly - doubling or even trebling - as transport and the heating systems for homes and businesses switch away from fossil fuels.

Alongside a re-fuelling revolution would go a frugality revolution, as societies put an end to energy wastage.

The article points out that politicians usually don't get around to any tangible action on targets that are 40-years off. This problem is unique because you can't introduce changes of this magnitude without decades of preparation and progress.

Steve's promise spells an end to any nonsense about "intensity based" emissions reductions for the Tar Sands. That has to be totally ruled out. There's no way you can increase emissions for the dirtiest energy project on the planet and slash overall emissions 80% within just two generations.

And Mike - just treat the Tar Sands like asbestos - don't worry about the flip-flops - just say "no."

What Does It Take to Get Harper to a Photo Shoot?

Once again Steve has done it - left fellow world leaders standing around waiting for him to show up to a group photo shoot. So, what's it going to take to get Steve to show up on time? Maybe he needs something like this:

It's a Record

Found this over at CBC News. A guy named Mark Malkoff set a world record for the greatest number of flights in a span of 30-days. Malkoff did this by literally living aboard a US regional carrier, Air Tran aircraft and logging between five and a dozen flights a day. So what do you do when you're living on a commuter plane for a month? This clip gives you an idea.

What Are You Doing in 2080?

Relax, I'm pretty sure you're not going to be doing anything in 2080 other than relying on some relative to pull the weeds at your grave.

But in Britain, they are talking about what they'll be doing in 2080 or at least what the next generations of Britons will be doing. That's because the British government has released its annual report warning its citizens of what they can expect by 2080 and urging them to begin planning and preparing for it.

For example, the Brits are warning their public that the country will be at least two degrees warmer by 2080 with parts in the south, including London, upwards of six degrees warmer. That, by the way, is a lot of "warmer."

The British government knows what your government knows. They know that climate change on a serious scale is inevitable and they know that defining and implementing effective measures for adaptation and remediation is a multi-generational challenge.

Telling people what's coming in 2080 allows them to work out, with some accuracy, what changes they can expect along the way. That's because today's generation of Britons needs to know what they'll be dealing with in 2040 and 2060.

So, here's the question. What has your government told you to expect by 2080 where you live in Grand Prairie, Alberta or Dauphin, Manitoba or Port Hope, Ontario or Miramichi, New Brunswick? I know what they've told you because I know what they've told me - nothing.

So here's the next question. Why hasn't your government taken the obvious step of telling you what your area should expect and begin planning for in 2080 and 2040 and 2060? Why indeed? Why haven't the opposition parties been demanding, furiously insisting the government do just that? Why have they stood mute on this while feeding you a crockpot full of garbage about bitumen and national unity?

Maybe they don't want to discuss this with you because they have a pretty good idea of how you might react. Maybe they see this as an unwelcome problem they would just prefer to move down the road, to leave for somebody else to clean up.

Why do we see the Europeans as so strident on slashing global carbon emissions right now? What's with that anyway? It's really quite simple. The Euros don't have to look to the horizon for signs of the approach of global warming. It's already arrived. It's real, tangible. The closer you get to the Mediterranean the more tangible it becomes.

Take Greece, for example. It's forest fire season has expanded by six weeks. The country is beset by the double whammy of heatwaves and drought. Northern Europe is getting wetter, southern Europe is drying out. Several months ago the Greek minister of tourism lamented that his country was becoming unsuitable for visitors during the summer months. Greek agriculture has taken a hard hit. The country has explored options including later planting and alternate crops. Unfortunately the alternates need 40% more water which is problematical when you're confronted with a sustained drought.

Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece are all losing arable farmland to desertification. You don't have to convince these people about global warming, they live it.

So here's a final question. If London, capital of an island nation whose climate is moderated by surrounding seas, is facing a 6 degree temperature increase by 2080, what do you think lies in store for you folks from Toronto and Winnipeg and Calgary by 2080? Do you even want to know?

The Taliban Relocate

The only thing surprising is that anyone should be surprised. Afghan defence officials have told McClatchey Newspapers that the recent American offensive in Helmand province has succeeded - in moving the Taliban to relocate. Like all good little insurgents they've simply moved, this time to the east and the north.

Why should this outcome have been so obvious? Well, what would have been the alternative? The only option the Taliban had was to stand and fight with WWII vintage assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades against American strike fighters, attack helicopters, drones, artillery and tanks. That really doesn't sound too enticing, does it? Especially not when you can hand the Americans a tactical defeat by simply walking away.

It will be interesting to see how long the Americans stick to their promise to "hold" Helmand province. It takes a lot of people to hold turf in an insurgency, a lot of people that neither NATO nor the United States have in Afghanistan. Even with the additional 17,000 troops sent by Obama, they're left with a small force for the job they've been given.

I'm sure the Taliban would be quite content if the Americans want to tie down their new force in static positions in Helmand. Keep in mind that the Taliban's long game is to simply outwait the Westerners.