It Takes More than Burning a Uniform

Canadian Forces officers have collected and burned the uniforms and kit of convicted serial killer, Colonel Russel Williams.

Canadian Forces spokesperson Cmdr. Hubert Genest said in an interview that the idea to burn the uniforms had emerged “from the bottom up and been endorsed by the chain of command.”

“We did what we felt was necessary,” said Cmdr. Genest. “It feels right.”

...Military historians called the burning of his kit unprecedented. “I’ve never heard anything like that,” said Jack Granatstein, director general of the Canadian War Museum. “I guess it’s embarrassment as much as anything...to erase the shame and stigma” of Mr. Williams’ association with the Forces. “It’s an exorcism. We are exorcising the memory of Russell Williams.”

An exorcism?  Say what?  Is that how our military washes its hands of Russell Williams?  I don't think so.  Maybe the Canadian Forces should man up and show enough respect to the victims to delve into how a guy this bent could rise to the top ranks of the military.  Was there something they should have noticed?  I mean let's face it, the ranks of the most successful in any field tend to have a solid percentage of sociopathic personalities.   Officer candidates go through a bit of psychological testing on their way in along with plenty of physical testing.   During their careers they have to go through regular physical testing.   Maybe should they also get a little bit of ongoing psychological assessment too?

I think we should know that the people we put in charge of our most lethal weapons haven't come unhinged.  

Defeated Republican Congressman Slams Climate Change Deniers In His Own Party

South Carolina's Bob Inglis lost his party's nomination to a Tea Bagger and he's now packing up to get out of Washington.  But he's taking time on his way out to slam the climate change denialists in the Republican ranks and to warn climate scientists of what they're facing over the next two years.

Unburdened by the prospect of another campaign, Inglis, in this final hearing, spared no scorn for climate change deniers in his own party and beyond, suggesting that they continue to ignore global warming at their own peril. "I would also suggest to my free enterprise colleagues – especially conservatives here—whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey, what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don't," the South Carolina Republican said in his opening remarks. "And they plan on eating our lunch in this next century."

" There are people who make a lot of money on talk radio and talk TV saying a lot of things. They slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and they're experts on climate change. They substitute their judgment for people who have Ph.D.s and work tirelessly."

 " I'd encourage scientists who are listening out there to get ready for the hearings that are coming up in the next Congress. Those will be difficult hearings for climate scientists. But, I would encourage you to welcome those as fabulous opportunities to teach. Don't come here defensively."

Iggy, Let's Cut the Crap. Israel Will Never Tolerate a Palestinian State

Never, as in not ever, Iggy and its time you came clean on Israel.  So long as Israel exists it will never tolerate a Palestinian state.

Why not?  Because Israel cannot get by without controlling the aquifer that lies beneath the West Bank.

Listen to former and current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  This is what he told the Likud Party and it just doesn't get any clearer than this:

"A Palestinian state would control the aquifer, which gives us 30 percent of our water. Yes to a Palestinian state means no to a Jewish state, and yes to a Jewish state means no to a Palestinian State."
So let's cut the bullshit about Israel wanting to live peacefully beside the Palestinians.  That is a rancid fantasy.  There's a reason why the Israeli army of occupation in the West Bank bulldozes Palestinian orchards and refuses Palestinians permission to drill wells in their own land.  That water is Israel's even if it does belong to the Palestinians.  If the Palestinian shoe was on your foot Iggy, how would you react?

Palin Slams Obamas as Unpatriotic and Racist

Unbelievable.  The Weasel of Wassila, Sarah Palin, is about to release a new book in which she slams Barack and Michelle Obama.   From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Sarah Palin has accused Barack and Michelle Obama of being unpatriotic and has suggested they are racist.
 
In leaked extracts of her new book, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate argues that the first black US president is among those who regarded the Tea Party movement as racially prejudiced and who thinks ''America is a fundamentally unjust and unequal country''.

As proof, she quoted a 2008 campaign speech in which Mrs Obama said ''for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country''. Mrs Palin went on: ''I guess this shouldn't surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church listening to his rants against America and white people.''

Mrs Palin's second book is regarded as a launch pad for a bid for the 2012 Republican nomination, which she admitted this week she was ''seriously considering''.

The book criticises talent show contestants and the ''cult of self-esteem'', which she blames partly on Mr Obama: ''No one they have encountered in their lives - from their parents to their teachers to their president - wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth. So they grew up convinced that they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson.''

Mrs Palin has begun a reality show in which she talks about her family life and home state of Alaska.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was asked what he thought of Palin's claim that she could defeat Barack Obama:

The Tacs Stay - Bring On the F-35s

The Cold War in Europe is a thing of history but the deadliest weapons developed to fight it are still there.  Hundreds of B-61 nuclear bombs will remain in Europe, stored at supposedly secure bunkers at NATO and US airbases, mainly in Germany.

The B-61 (shown above) is a really versatile weapon.  It can withstand speeds of up to Mach 2, it can be dropped from as low as 50-feet, and it can be configured to deliver a nuclear blast of between 1 and 340-kilotons.  There's even a 'bunker busting' version that might be just dandy for vaporizing some less-than-friendly country's underground nuclear installations.

This bomb was developed in the 60's but, thanks to the Americans' Operation Enduring Stockpile (no, I didn't make that up) they're still going strong.  The Pentagon even has a planned 2-billion dollar update planned for the remaining stocks.  But wait, there's more!   The B-61 is also being modified to make it compatible with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the very ship we've signed on to buy.

Marry a nuclear bomb to the F-35's stealth technology and you've got quite a package - an intruder aircraft capable of getting into the enemy's backyard undetected to nuke the hell out of something before the other side even knows it's there.

You see, all this nonsense about the F-35 defending Canadian airspace is pablum for the gullible.   As the Australians discovered, the F-35 is all but worthless as an air defence fighter.  One mission and it's gone.   BUT - as a bomb sled using stealth to penetrate the other guy's air defences, it seems to have some utility.

Is there some reason nobody on Parliament Hill is asking these questions.

Oh Yeah, About Leaving Afghanistan in 2014?

The Brits say they're definitely, positively, absolutely out of Afghanistan in 2014 and, I suppose, we'll just wait and see.   But I know another country that isn't planning on leaving for years, possibly decades to come.  That would be the United States, the country that has now grown quite comfortable with permanent war, the world's one and only Warfare State.

This one-for-all, all-for-one pap NATO and our own scurrilous pols have been feeding us this past decade is just that.  It's nonsense.  There have always been two players in this, the United States and everyone else.  Call it Washington's NATO Foreign Legion.  America has a bevy of geo-political interests in this hotspot that the rest of us don't share.  It's a focal point for rivals China, India and Russia.  Add to those three another nuclear power - Pakistan.   America, China, India, Russia, Pakistan - those guys have the lion's share of all the nukes in the world and now they're in this hellhole jockeying for position.

I'm not just pulling this out of my backside.  We didn't hear much about it but the U.S. awarded a big contract in early November.  It went to B.L. Harbert, a Birmingham, Ala., contractor who got the nod to construct the new U.S. Embassy compound in Islamabad, Pakistan.  Like its sister embassy in Baghdad, it'll be a Vatican City sized compound including chancery buildings, an ambassador's residence, apartment buildings, recreation facilities and support, maintenance and security buildings and infrastructure.  The contract is for a whopping $734-million greenbacks.   Like the Baghdad embassy it'll be a heavily defended, walled complex which will come in handy because it will be attacked, probably with some frequency.

So, here's the deal.   You don't decide in November, 2010 to build a billion dollar mega-Alamo in a dirt poor country if you even think you might scram in 2014.  No, building the second biggest embassy on the planet is a pretty good indication you've just bought another stack of chips.

Easy Meat

This is scary.  I just took a Pew current affairs quiz on America and I scored higher than 99% of Americans.  There were only 12 questions and mainly softballs at that.  Apparently just one in a hundred respondents got them all correct.

According to AlterNet, Americans quizzed averaged just five right.  That's five out of twelve, meaning seven wrong answers.   Less than half of Americans knew the Republicans took the House in the midterms.

If this is an accurate depiction of Americans' awareness of what's happening in their own country, it explains everything.  Everything.  Suddenly Sarah Palin, Rand Paul and the Tea Party make sense.  I get it.  At last I get it.

Gay Marriage in Canadian Airspace???

Don't they need a licence?  AlterNet is reporting that the captain of a Virgin Airways flight from San Francisco to New York, briefly diverted into Canadian airspace so he could quickly marry two gay passengers.

One passenger told this to MSNBC:

  " The head flight attendant made the announcement on the P.A. " While you were sleeping, we had a little wedding in the galley. The captain diverted us over Canadian airspace so he could marry two gentlemen." The flight attendants on Virgin are very playful and really good at conversation, so we weren't sure if they were having fun with us. But we could tell at the end he was being genuine. I was traveling with two other co-workers and we had to sort out what happened. We were like, is that a service they offer?"

A Virgin America spokesperson had few details about the nuptials, but confirmed that this wasn't the first time Virgin has obliged passengers' wedding needs at 30,000 feet. Three years ago, a wedding was performed on a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas -- officiated by Sir Richard Branson himself.

Putting Ireland's Problems in Perspective

Metro Toronto has about 5.6 million people.   The Irish Republic has just 4.6 million citizens.  Ireland's bank debt is estimated at well over 100-billion Euros.  In 2008, the Irish government sought to save the country's banks by giving guarantees of 400-billion Euros, money they never had.

This is a very small country drowning in a tsunami of debt.  The ancient Greeks warned that Nemesis always follows Hubris.   How did we come to forget that?

Clueless in Kandahar

As Western forces slog through their 10th year of combat in Afghanistan, a sign of just how poorly they've gotten through to the locals is how few Afghans have any idea of the events of 9/11 and what caused our intervention in their country.  

The International Council on Security and Development reports that fully 92 per cent of the population in the key provinces of Helmand and Kandahar know nothing of the airliner hijackings and attacks of September 11, 2001.   These are the Pashtun provinces where the heaviest fighting has raged for the past decade and the locals still have almost no idea why we're there at all.

ICOS  President Norine MacDonald suggests we should be explaining to the Afghan people just why we've been stomping their villages and countryside for the past decade.  I guess that just never dawned on our astonishingly mediocre military leadership in Afghanistan.   Probably for the cost of just one or two airstrikes they could have papered Helmand and Kandahar with some leaflets explaining the whole business.

Gambling on the Misery of Others

It was called champerty and it used to be a crime.   Now Wall Street is all over it, investing in other peoples' lawsuits.  The Center for Public Integrity warns that investors have begun flocking to lawsuits, even divorce and medical malpractice cases, in search of easy pickings:

Large banks, hedge funds and private investors hungry for new and lucrative opportunities are bankrolling other people’s lawsuits, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into medical malpractice claims, divorce battles and class actions against corporations — all in the hope of sharing in the potential winnings.

...Most investments are in the smaller cases that fill court dockets. Ardec Funding, a New York lender backed by a hedge fund, lent $45,000 in June to a Manhattan lawyer hired by the parents of a baby brain-damaged at birth. The lawyer hired two doctors, a physical therapist and an economist to testify at a July trial. The jury awarded the baby $510,000. Ardec is collecting interest at an annual rate of 24 percent, or $900 a month, until the award is paid.

Champerty was widely decriminalized during the 20th century but it can still fetch you up to seven years inside in Hong Kong.  In the U.S., however, it seems anything goes.... but not without problems.

the review shows that borrowed money also is fueling abuses, including cases initiated and controlled by investors. A Florida judge in December ordered an investment banker who orchestrated a shareholder lawsuit against Fresh Del Monte Produce to repay the company’s legal expenses, ruling that the case should not have reached trial.
 
Such financing also drains money from plaintiffs. Interest rates on lawsuit loans generally exceed 15 percent a year, and most states allow lawyers that borrow to bill clients for the interest payments. The cost can exceed the benefits of winning. A woman injured in a 1995 car accident outside Philadelphia borrowed money for a suit, as did her lawyer. By the time she won $169,125 in 2003, the lenders were owed $221,000.

Lawyers are not required to tell clients that they have borrowed money, so the client may be unaware that there is financial pressure to resolve cases quickly. Lenders also seek detailed information about cases, which can jeopardize client confidentiality. A federal judge in Delaware ruled in June that a company suing Facebook for patent infringement had to show Facebook documents that its lawyer had shared with a lender.

When large banks and hedge funds eye lawsuits as a lucrative investment opportunity, it's their money that can do the talking, not the litigant.

Do They Stay or Do They Go? Europe's Tactical Nukes

Sam Nunn and the Nuclear Threat Initiative are adamant - tactical nuclear weapons, the legacy of the Cold War in Europe, have to be secured and scrapped.  In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, the former senator described these mini-nukes as "a terrorist's dream."

If we don’t address this issue with urgency, we may wake up one day to a 1972 Munich-Olympics scenario, with a masked terrorist waving a gun outside of a nuclear warhead bunker somewhere in Europe. This time the hostages could be millions of people living close by. 

Nunn isn't exaggerating.  There are plenty of these nuclear warhead bunkers throughout Europe and terrorists would have the advantage of initiative in deciding which of them to attack and when.  These are battlefield weapons, intended to be used against enemy formations.  They come in many forms including nuclear land mines, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, nuclear artillery shells and nuclear bombs to be slung under the wings of jet fighters.   Generally speaking they're more powerful than the nukes dropped on Japan in 1945.

Nunn and his colleagues at NTI, including George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, argue forcefully for scrapping of nuclear weapons.  They argue there has been so much proliferation already and so many non-nuclear states poised on the brink of developing their own weapons that another nuclear war capable of sparking a global nuclear holocaust is almost inevitable.   They believe the only way to stop that is a general, nuclear disarmament.

NTI is trying to get its message across in time for the NATO summit that begins tomorrow in Lisbon.   However PressEurop is reporting that the decision has already been taken, those nukes are staying.

“Tactical nuclear weapons to stay in Europe,” announces De Standaard. The Belgian daily explains that NATO’s new strategic concept, to be approved at a summit scheduled for 19 and 20 November, does not call for the withdrawal of 200 American nuclear weapons located in Europe. Some countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and Norway believe that “these weapons have no military purpose.” However, given their proximity to Iran and Russia, Turkey and the Baltic countries are staunchly opposed to any withdrawal. De Standaard notes that France is adamant that the Alliance should not be used to promote the cause of nuclear disarmament in Europe.

Why Ireland Recoils at Being Rescued

The very idea of the European Union bailing out the Irish government and the country's banks is almost more than the country can bear.  It's not that they don't need the bailout.  They do, they need it desperately.  It's not as though the bailout won't save the country from collapse.   That's exactly what it will do.

Think of it as a kid who has lost his job having to go back to live with his parents.

The Irish struggled for centuries to free themselves of British domination.  Barely a century after winning their hard-fought struggle for independence, their wanton excesses have left them right back under someone else's boot.  It's so bad that the Irish leader, Brian Cowen, is in denial, refusing to admit that a multi-billion Euro bailout is even in the works.   From The Guardian:

Historian Diarmuid Ferriter described it as devastating and a " humiliating milestone"  that the nation's sovereignty was being compromised nearly 100 years after hard-fought independence. A leader in the Irish Times talked of ignominy. " There is the shame of it all,"  it said. " Having obtained our political independence from Britain to be masters of our own affairs, we have now surrendered our sovereignty to the European commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF."

But the country's inhabitants probably didn't have much time to read their papers yesterday. At 8.20am, the governor of the Irish Central Bank confirmed – despite protestations by the taoiseach, Brian Cowen, that there was no IMF bailout – that an IMF loan of tens of billions of euros was being prepared.

By mid-afternoon the country seemed to have descended into chaos. There were angry outbursts in the Daíl, accusations of a government cover-up, new threats voiced over the country's low corporation tax rate. Cowen nearly lost his temper with reporters. Again. The finance minister admitted the banks had " very big issues".  And to cap it all, there were fresh accusations that the banks were lying about their figures to maximise the price they would get from the state, which nationalised the banks' most toxic debts this year.

Ireland's government and economy are reeling, the nemesis that inevitably follows on the heels of hubris, but the real victim may be the Irish psyche.

The F-35 is Cracking Up

It's supposed to have a lifespan of 8,000 hours but that may be wishful thinking.  A "B" model airframe undergoing fatigue testing has sustained cracks in the rear bulkhead after just 1,500 hours.   The F-35B is the short-takeoff/vertical-landing model being developed for the U.S. Marine Corps.    In testing the F-35B is apparently faring somewhat worse than other models.

The Pentagon has been working for weeks to come up with ways to expedite testing and to fix defects in the aircraft.

New budgets and delivery schedules for the F-35 are expected to be announced on Monday after the Defense Acquisition Board meets to review the latest cost and test data.

The Dutch Don't Have to Get All Pervy About Airport Security

America's Transportation Security Administration is catching a lot of heat from the travelling public over its intrusive, full body scanners that allow operators to look under your clothes for any concealed objects while getting a pretty good look at your 'junk' too.

McClatchey Newspapers reports that the TSA went overboard with their pervy technology and could have had a safer, effective and non-intrusive system used by the Dutch at Schiphol airport.

Unlike the backscatter imaging devices that provide revealing body images and which have stoked concerns about radiation, the system at Schiphol uses radio waves to detect contraband.

The Woburn, Mass., firm that manufacturers the system, L-3 Communications Security & Detection Systems, claims on its website that the radio waves are "10,000 times lower than other commonly-used radio frequency devices."

If the software identifies a passenger carrying explosives, an outline of the problem body area is displayed on a generic mannequin figure instead of on the actual image of the passenger's body. The mannequin image, which appears on the operator's control panel, " can then be used by security personnel to direct a focused discussion or search,"  the company website reads.

The " automatic threat detection"  system dubbed " ProVision ATD,"  sells for $40,000 to $150,000 and doesn't use ionizing radiation or X-rays.

McClatchey says the TSA has gotten enough heat and has ordered 200 of the ProVision units so you won't have to worry about them leering at yours.

Palin Believes She Can Defeat Obama

" I believe so."  That was Sarah Palin's response when asked by Barbara Walters if she could beat Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

Could she be right?   Well, it is remotely conceivable that America's median IQ could slip into the low double digits, just not very likely.   By all accounts, chances are she'll be taken out by her own team, the Republicans.   Her performance in the mid-terms was less than inspirational.   Palin backed a number of Tea Party candidates who went down in flames.   In her home state of Alaska, the right winger she backed lost to a "write in" candidate.  Ouch, that burns!

Palin's potential Republican presidential rivals are honing their skinning knives.  If she files her nomination papers she'll be like a bull moose on opening day of hunting season.

In a way I'd like to see her seek her party's presidential nomination.  It would be the Republicans admitting they still have room for the village idiot and I suspect her very presence would be toxic to whichever candidate does get the Republican nod.

Well, She WAS Underage....

A 15-year old South African girl has been charged with statutory rape along with the 14 and 16-year old boys who raped her.

Prosecutors had concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge the boys with actual rape but, hey, they're all underage so that means they can all be charged with statutory rape for 'consensual' sex with a minor.

See how that works?  The National Prosecuting Authority figures it can't make rape charges stick against the rapists so that instantly transforms the crime into a matter of consensual sex.

 " "We do feel that this is further brutalization,"  South Africa's Eye Witness News quotes Lynne Cawood from Childline South Africa as saying.

" Secondly, dramatization of a child who is incredibly vulnerable,"  she said.

South Africa has one of the highest incidences of rape in the world.
One woman is raped every 17 seconds, child rights groups say.

"This is Canada, Not Zimbabwe..."

That was the reaction from prominent U Vic climate scientist Andrew Weaver to the Conservative Senate sabotage of climate-change legislation.

It ticks off Weaver that Harper, having been voted in on a promise to do away with the unelected Senate, instead packed the institution with ill-informed patronage appointments (" Mike Duffy, climate scientist extraordinaire" ) who waited until 15 opposition members were absent before defeating, without debate, a bill that had already been OK'd by the elected arm of Parliament.

The UVic climatologist, sputtering words like " unbelievable" and " dictator" and   " shocking affront to democracy,"  says he hopes the opposition will force Harper's minority government to fall. " He's got to get kicked out. This is Canada, not Zimbabwe . . . or maybe it is.

" It's all about not wanting to do anything about the issue," Weaver says of the Senate sabotage. It's about pandering to the oil industry, to the Conservatives' Alberta power base.

 Weaver had a lot of time for Jim Prentice, who quit as Harper's environment minister this month to take a job in banking. Prentice understood the issues, but couldn't get past the wilful ignorance of the Flat Earth Society at his own cabinet table, Weaver says. "The level of scientific illiteracy in the Harper government is mind-boggling."

 " Climate scientists are  a collective Noah,"  Weaver says. They have done their job, given the evidence to the politicians — only to be ignored. Weaver, the author of Keeping Cool: Canada in a Warming World, also had a key role when the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its report in 2007. People like him must be tempted to throw their hands in the air and walk away, particularly when constantly challenged by the half-informed.

 

 

Did US Healthcare Really Plot to Do-In Michael Moore?

A former vice president of one of America's largest healthcare insurers said industry executives were panicked that Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko" could be as powerful as "Fahrenheit 911."  One exec apparently said if nothing else worked, Moore might have to be pushed "off a cliff."

Thanks, Uncle Sam. Warren Buffet Praises the Washington Bailout

To the Tea Partiers and the Republican morons, hucksters and fixers who feed on them, Satan arrived in their cherished United States in the form of the government bailout of Wall Street and the banks.  Begun by Bush at the end of his term the programme was carried on by Obama.   And, today, billionaire Warren Buffet says they made the right call.