Would You Buy a Stealth Fighter That's Not?

The raison d'etre that supposedly justifies the over-budget, overdue and under-performing F-35 is its stealth.   The idea is that it is supposed to be invisible which, we're told, more than offsets all its other disadvantages.

If history, ancient and modern, has shown us anything it's that great military breakthroughs are fleeting.   The other guy sees a problem and he finds a way to counter it often at a fraction of the cost the first guy incurred in creating it.

Now it seems the F-35s vaunted stealth advantage may be largely neutralized even before the aircraft becomes operational.   The F-35 has been optimized to thwart X and S-band radars which has led the Russians to field their L-band radar.

Defence analysts say the new Russian L band radar will detect the fighter and can be fitted to Sukhoi jet fighters of the type flown by Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Vietnam.

The Liberal member for Tangney, Dr Dennis Jensen, is a former research scientist and defence analyst with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. He says the radar system can see through the F-35's stealth protection.

 " The stealth on the Joint Strike Fighter has been optimised around a certain set of frequencies and this is the problem with the radar that the Russians have developed to fit into the Sukhoi Flankers among others."

The Russians have been telling anyone who'll listen that they can defeat the latest American stealth technology.   And they're backing that up with their own fifth-generation, stealth fighter, the Sukhoi T-50:

How effective is the new Russian super jet?   Well the modern and highly capable Indian Air Force is going for it and they've been pretty shrewd in the aircraft they deploy.

Because stealth technology can and will be defeated we need to consider what this aircraft is giving up for the sake of stealth.   Combat aircraft are an enormous assortment of compromises.  You give up something to get something else.  Everything comes at a cost - speed, range, maneuverability,payload, avionics, redundancy, strength and now one more cost - stealth.   What does the F-35 give up to be stealthy?  Quite a bit actually.  Everything has to be carried inside which means fewer bombs, fewer missiles and no external fuel tanks.  Mount any of that stuff outside and it's simply another airplane.

The question becomes if the F-35 was detectable, if it's stealth advantage is negated, is the rest of the airplane worth the massive cost?   The answer is plainly no.   Once the F-35 can be seen it's just another bomb truck that is pretty much outmatched by the latest European and Russian stuff.   Once the stealth is gone this aircraft needs to be escorted by real fighters if it's to have any chance in contested airspace.  Without stealth this thing won't have much chance of avoiding close-in fighting where all its weaknesses become glaring.

Hey, I've got the solution.   This sort of aircraft has a lifespan of about 20-years so why don't we get a money back warranty from Lockheed that the aircraft will be stealthy to all possible threats for, say, at least ten years?  Do you think for a minute Lockheed would imagine giving that sort of assurance?   If Lockheed isn't willing to take a gamble on their own technology, should we?

It Just Doesn't Get Any Better

And one for the road:



Jeff Beck's tribute to the legendary Les Paul:



And to bridge the generation gap again. Knopfler and Chet Atkins. Wait for "Imagine":



And just the one more:

A Perfectly Conservative Integrity Commissioner

Until she packed up her tent and stole out of town in October, Christiane Ouimet had spent the past three years collecting the big bucks as the Harper government's integrity commissioner.  There's a reason she got out of Dodge in a hurry.  In fact there seems to be more than one.

According to Auditor General Sheila Fraser, Madam Integrity Commissioner was decidedly deficient in, well, integrity.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser released a damning report Thursday on Christiane Ouimet, who resigned as public sector integrity commissioner in October four years before her term was set to expire amid allegations of internal strife and that she wasn't doing her job, if she did anything at all.

During her three years as commissioner, Ouimet investigated only five of the more than 200 complaints her office received and never produced any recommendations or findings of wrongdoing or reprisals against whistleblowers.

Fraser also found Ouimet berated her staff, sometimes yelling and swearing at them in front of others, and amassed binders full of personal information — 375 pages in total — on a former employee she didn't trust, and circulated some of the information to government officials and prospective employers in the private sector.

" I find this obviously very troubling and I think very disappointing,"  Fraser said Thursday. " We've all heard of bad bosses, but I'm troubled by the fact that there were binders of material being assembled by personnel within that office on someone who had left that office six months previously.”

So, what's the problem?   Isn't this the way we've come to expect Conservatives to act?

Somebody Will Be Singing This 50-Years From Now

Real poetry survives because it's so much more than just a song

Carole James Booted for Cozying Up to Big Business?

That's how Carole James explains why she was made to walk the plank by BC NDP insiders.

James said Tuesday that behind the scenes party brokers such as Bob Williams and Bill Tieleman were actively working to remove her because she was taking the party to the right and extending an olive branch to big business -- the long-sworn enemy of the NDP, the longtime party of unions and workers.

 The MLA who led the revolt, Jenny Kwan, says what sparked the coup was the belief that James simply couldn't get the NDP into power.

 

Kwan, leader of 13 dissident MLAs who openly opposed James's leadership, said the party had to hurry to choose a new leader for fear the B.C. Liberals will call a snap election once their own new leader is in place.

 " That's why there was an urgency to get this renewal,"  Kwan told The Province.  " W e are going to be ready when they call an election."
 

There remains some speculation that the James ouster may have split the party and left it weakened.   I'm no Dipper but I don't see it.  I think Carole James has had her 15-minutes in the spotlight and she's now yesterday's news.  It's hard to understand how her departure could have a seismic impact on the NDP's fortunes, or at least a negative impact.

Could China Call America's (and our own) Bluff?

What if China did a complete 180 and agreed to legally binding greenhouse gas emission cuts including international monitoring and verification?   Don't laugh, they might just do that at Cancun.

Are the Chinese calling our bluff?   The U.S. and its faithful lapdog, a.k.a. the Harper government, have been dragging their heels on serious emissions cuts, hiding behind the argument that we need a binding agreement with the developing nations (i.e. China and India) first.

That was always a pretty rich argument coming from Canada, the world's emerging petro-state, governed by petro-pols, Tar Sanders and Fossil Fuelers.  It was also a giggle coming from the Americans with their "bought and paid for" Congress securely in the arms of Big Oil and Big Coal.   Yet to the willingly gullible it sounded like a plausible position - but only so long as the other side kept saying no.

Shit, oh dear, what have we done?  Has our game plan counted on Chinese intransigence?   Do we even have a Plan B?   What if the Chinese use their concession on overall emissions to bolster their argument on per capita emissions equality?   Don't understand that one?  Bear with me.

The historic (and I suspect desired) standoff between North America and the emerging economic superpowers has featured two equally plausible yet irreconcilable arguments behind which both sides could shelter with their supposed moral integrity intact.   Our side focused on total, overall emissions and told the Chinese that, as the newly crowned top overall  emitter, we demanded they sign on for binding reductions subject to international verification.   The Chinese retorted that their emissions needed to recognize that they were more than three times as populous as America and that, therefore, Americans were the real emissions swine, pumping out three times as much greenhouse gas per capita than the average Chinese guy.

The per capita argument has roughly the same moral weight as our, overall emissions argument.   China's pair of aces is backed up by a king - the argument that much of their emissions results from industrial production that is destined for WalMart shelves across America.   The Chinese didn't show up in the middle of the night and walk away with our manufacturing plants.   They didn't steal General Motors.   G.M. went over there and took those jobs with it.   So there is some legitimacy to China's backup argument.

So the dilemma becomes how, if the Chinese concede to our demands, do we persist in rejecting theirs without totally losing the moral high ground?   I don't think we can  hope to come out of this ahead.   In fact, I'm pretty sure the last thing we want to do is to honour our own, reciprocal obligations under our demand - simple binding and verifiable reductions in overall emissions.

Let's put it this way.  Canadians would have some tough choices - keep Athabasca rolling and growing or walk to work.  A strict, meaningful emissions reduction regime that didn't crack down on Athabasca would have to be met on the backs of other industries and the Canadian public.   And those parties might want to know why in hell they had to make good Athabasca's emissions?  And Harper might have to come up with an answer he doesn't have.

I think the Chinese might call our bluff and force us to admit we've been bluffing all along.

Here - Leader, Leader Here - Leader, Leader

Move Over Alfred, Make Way for Confucious

Those silly Chinese and their tempers.  Outraged that the Nobel committee decided to award this year's Nobel peace prize to a Chinese activist, China has announce the creation of its own peace prize, the Confucius peace prize.   This from the lovely folks who brought you the Tienanmen Square massacre.

Apparently the Confucius will be awarded each year the day prior to the Nobel award.  Insiders have said the actual Confucius prize itself looks remarkably like a pirated Michael Jackson CD.   The world waits with baited breath.

The American Disease Jumps Our Border

Income inequality might as well be called the American Disease if only because it is far more prominent there than anywhere else in the developed world.

Canadians, or at least many of us, like to think of ourselves as superior to that what with our egalitarian social safety net and all but we need to drop that smugness - now.  Carol Goar sounds the alarm on income inequality taking a firm hold in Canada in the 21st century and it's a warning we must heed.

Last week, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published a study by senior economist Armine Yalnizyan that showed the richest one per cent of the population reaped an unprecedented one-third of the gains from economic growth between 1997 and 2007. She has written about the growing gap between Canada’s corporate elite and the rest of the population before. But this time, her message got people talking.

In October, Penguin released a new book by Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig and Osgoode Hall tax professor Neil Brooks called The Trouble with Billionaires. It argues the excessive inequality in North America is bad for democracy, bad for the economy and bad for society. The book is getting respectful reviews in unexpected places. Here is what Jonathan Kay, managing editor of commentary at the National Post, wrote in the current issue of the Literary Review of Canada: “Given the somewhat radical left-wing bona fides of McQuaig, I was surprised how reasonable I found many of the arguments in this book.”

I have written on the bitter scourge of income inequality at length.  You might wish to check out these posts:

 " A Must-Read for the Liberal Right"

 "
  Robert Reich Dissects America's New Great Recession.  The Real Culprit?  Inequality."


" The Century of Revolution."


" Robert Reich's  Rational Plan to End the Great Recession."

There was a time when Liberals weren't afraid to fight income inequality, perhaps back when they respected liberalism.   I don't sense that inclination in today's laughably timid and feckless, centre-right Liberals.

BC Oil Tanker Ban - a Good Start

The House of Commons has passed by 143-138 an NDP motion to ban oil tanker traffic off British Columbia's north coast.  It's a symbolic thing, important even though it's not binding on the Harper government.

For British Columbians, who overwhelmingly oppose the Enbridge tanker port proposal for Kitimat, the vote will be important to smoke out the parliamentary rapscallions who support the tanker proposal.   I suspect there'll be a number of Tory MPs out here who just ran afoul of their constituents on an issue we don't take lightly.

Now if the NDP can just publish a list of the nay votes.

Green or Brown, Makes No Difference, Bullshit Stinks.

Caught in a massive wedgie administered today by Canada's environment commissioner, Harper's part-time EnviroMin, John "Gaping Maw" Baird wasted no time covering his tracks with green bullshit.

Commissioner Scott Vaughan blasted the Tories for not even having the basic information they would need to begin dealing with the impacts of global warming already spreading through Canada.

Lard arse Baird replied that the Harpies are working furiously to address Mr. Vaughan's concerns.

Environment Canada, Mr. Baird added, has spent more than $140-million on water-related programs and science in the past year. And the government has invested $85.9-million to better understand the impacts of climate change on our health, infrastructure and northern communities, he said.

“For example,” the minister said, “Environment Canada's climate science research program is tightly integrated with global efforts to ensure that our country has the best available climate change and climate variability information available.”

Anybody who will take John Baird on his word on this is an idiot or else simply likes the taste of bullshit.  Three years ago Harper acknowledged global warming as the greatest threat facing mankind and then promptly turned his back on the issue.

The Harpies were also slammed for an utter lack of preparedness to deal with oil spills on our coasts.   Baird danced around this one by claiming "when emergencies occur the National Marine Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Regime provides the capacity for an effective response to oil spills in Canadian waters."   He's going to fight an oil spill with a "regime"?   No, no, no, you loudmouth jerk, you fight oil spills with ready ships and pre-deployed, very expensive equipment.   So where are these ships, where are their crews, where is all that equipment?   Oh what was I thinking?  I forgot, we've got a "regime" instead.

Meanwhile CBC News  reports that Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch have ranked Canada as the fourth worst out of 57 nations in helping to halt climate change.   The only countries worse are Saudi Arabia in dead last, Kazakhstan at 56th, Australia 55th followed by Canada with an impressive 54th place.  If you need proof that Baird is just flinging green bullshit, there it is.

At Least We'll Be Able to Watch

Google Earth has introduced a technology what will allow us to watch and measure the environmental savaging of our planet due to global warming.  Yippee.

Yale Environment 360 reports Google's project uses 25-years of satellite data incorporating "trillions of scientific measurements" recorded by NASA's LANDSAT satellite system.  Google plans to make available 20 million CPU hours free to developing nations and scientific organizations to access the system.

Maybe, just maybe, this will force the climate cretins who form the Harper government to face reality.

Harper Outed as Climate Change Scammer

Who says Steve Harper doesn't give a dam about climate change?  That would be Scott Vaughan, the government's commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.  Vaughan says Harper hasn't even bothered to get the information he would need to deal with climate change.  From TorStar:

  Scott Vaughan, commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, says the government is failing to take charge of environmental issues because it has no plan to deal with the impacts of climate change, despite 18 years’ of promises.

Vaughan says climate change is already taking its toll, in the form of severe weather in Atlantic Canada, drought in the Prairies, the loss of boreal forests to pests and fire, and the thawing of the permafrost in the North.

Vaughan’s report today also says Ottawa is unprepared to respond to major oil spills, even though it receives reports of an average of one spill a day. “Given the findings of this audit, I am troubled that the government is not ready to respond to a major spill,” he said.

Vaughan also issues a warning about the government’s monitoring of fresh water, saying that in many cases water quality is not monitored, and Ottawa often has no idea who is supposed to be keeping tabs on which water supply.

Environment Canada “has not taken such basic steps as defining its responsibilities and responding to the threats to Canada’s water resources that it has identified,” he said.

Is it any wonder that prime ministerial dirtbag has gagged Environment Canada ever since he came to power?  That's what petro-states do.   Harper won't be letting something like the devastation of large parts of Canada stand in the way of his cherished Tar Sands expansion now will he?  Too bad we're stuck with Harper Lite running the other party.

An American Goes to Europe and Discovers America

An interesting item today from AlterNet via the Daily Kos.  It is written by an American ex pat living in Europe who had to travel abroad to see America as it really is.

 ...the British Guardian newspaper says that the so-called American middle class lifestyle for most people was fake and that was financed by three decades of a debt bubble which has now gone bust. The credit ride of working class folks living a middle class lifestyle is dead and gone. Is this article stating bluntly that it's over? The only remaining question is, will it ever come back? I mean, how long can people ride a wave of endless debt before the ride is over, all while pretending to be middle class? Is that what this British Guardian newspaper article is saying?

" In the midterm elections politicians have promised to " do something"  for the middle class. The kindest thing they could do is tell the truth: Americans have been living a middle-class lifestyle on working-class wages – and bridging the gap with credit. And it's over.

In a free-market society the real middle class is always a minority: if your street has a gate and a security camera at the end of it then you are middle class. A real middle-class kid can afford a college education, not a web-based degree. The real middle-class family does not skip meals or find its automobiles trapped in the repair shop because of unpaid bills.

The writer then draws on this item from the International Business Times:

The nation that once gloated over its ability to feed the entire world is seeing an explosion of poverty: The number of people surviving on food stamps is rising as biting unemployment refuses to abate, personal incomes have been falling while the debt bubble is inflating with each passing day and, in a more startling representation of the grim reality, tent cities are mushrooming as more and more people are pushed out of their ‘underwater’ homes.

And this passage from The Daily Mail: 

A record one in six American families went hungry last year because they did not have enough food, a shock survey has revealed.

Some 17.4million U.S. households - 50 million people - were classified as ‘food insecure’ which meant they regularly skipped meals even if they wanted to eat. Others went for entire days without eating and handed round smaller portion sizes to make their meagre offerings suffice.

The news comes as it is revealed that top U.S. executives saw their pay and bonuses shoot up last year in the face of the worst recession for 80 years.

This is an important article because it reveals not only the delusions so many Americans have of their own country and the world at large but also the smoldering social upheaval that is building across the United States.

A couple of years ago a friend and I rode our motorcycles along the coast down to southern California.  At one point we wound up in Monterey which is one very upscale town.  As we were enjoying dinner at a fine restaurant I saw my friend gazing at the splendour of the area.   I suggested that she soak it all up because she was looking at the very zenith of America for it was all built on borrowed money, debt.

The decline, some say near-extinction, of America's middle class is profoundly disturbing.   Yet this is the result of outsourcing industry by the elite, rentier class in search of short-term, maximized returns at the expense of their nation's long-term health and viability.

The middle class serves so many functions without which democracy itself falters.   A healthy, robust middle class spanning the range from the trades to the professions creates social cohesion, provides a buffer between the rich and poor, thwarts political extremism of all sorts and is the very ladder of merit-driven social advancement and the hope of the poor for a better life.  Destroy the middle class and you tear that ladder down.  Social mobility in the United States today is lower than it has been for a century or more.   Radical rightwing politics have taken hold.  Perverse ideologies are nurtured by a dissembling media.   The gap between the rich and the poor is burgeoning.   Social cohesion is dissolving as, one by one, the myths of prosperity are shattered.

With all the damage done it's very difficult to imagine a middle class restoration.  How do the powerless go about dismantling the super powerful oligarchy when the organs of the state have been put in harness to service of that elite?

Britain's Landmark Climate Change Initiative

The British government's advisory committee on climate change has presented a proposal for the U.K. to cut its carbon emissions by a staggering 60% by 2030.  From The Guardian:

 Achieving the target proposed by the Committee on Climate Change requires a complete revamp of the nation's electricity market, making it virtually zero-carbon, as well as an overhaul of heat-leaking homes and the replacement of petrol-driven cars with 11m electric or plug-in hybrid models.

The CCC's 2030 target, if passed into law as previous CCC targets have been, would be the first legally binding 2030 target in the world. The target – which is a cut relative to 1990 emissions levels – is intended to lead the way to a legally binding 80% UK cut by 2050.
"
" We are recommending a stretching but realistic fourth carbon budget and 2030 target, achievable at a cost of less than 1% of GDP. We therefore urge the government to legislate the budget, and to develop the policies required to cut emissions," said Lord Turner, who is the CCC's chair, as well as chairman of the Financial Services Authority. "The case for action on climate change is as strong as ever: climate science remains robust and suggests that there are very significant risks if we do not cut emissions. And countries acting now will gain economic benefits in an increasingly carbon-constrained world."

If the Brits are right and they can reduce their carbon emissions by 60% in just twenty years at a cost of less than 1% of GDP, what in Hell is our excuse?  Prime minister Chicken Licken uses raw fear, the first weapon of the truly unscrupulous, to claim the Canadian economy would reel from leading the Americans on climate change initiatives instead of merely following meekly behind.

I don't believe for a minute we could achieve the Brit's ambitious goal.  A lot of their ideas work best in a very densely populated urban environment but they could still be applicable to the Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal regions.

Of course Canada, thanks to the Conservatives and the Liberals, has been transformed into a classic petro-state.  With plans for a possible five fold expansion of the Tar Sands we pretty much kiss goodbye any hope of meaningful global warming initiatives.

The Big Lie - Working Better than Ever

American political satirist, Bill Maher, plainly struggles with the stupidity that infects so many of his own countrymen these days.   He singles out the Tea Party movement whose members rebel in the mistaken belief that Obama has raised their taxes when he has, in fact, managed to reduce their tax bill.  Maher shakes his head in bewilderment when this same mob rallies against government healthcare initiatives that they believe will destroy the best healthcare system in the world.  They don't get that American healthcare is considered the very worst in the developed West, ranked by the U.N. as 35th overall.

Maher's fellow Americans, or a great many of them, have been conditioned to ignore the science and scorn the global warming issue as a hoax.  They cover their ears and shut their eyes at the first sign of scientific evidence.

His countrymen recoil at the mention of "socialism," failing to appreciate that their country has always embraced socialist policies and outcomes - for the rich.  These same types have been conditioned to blame Obama for America's debt crisis.  They've been distracted well enough not to remember that the fuse on this debt bomb resulted from Republican-driven deregulation and was lit during the Bush-Cheney years.   They have forgotten that the loathed TARP programme was implemented by the Bush administration.

Maher's countrymen have somehow been trained to believe that the solution to their country's debt crisis is to make permanent the crippling tax cuts for the rich introduced as a temporary measure by Bush, the man who shamelessly referred to his "base" as the "haves and the have-mores."



So, just how have the minions been so effectively enlisted as the footsoldiers of the oligarchs?  How have they been manipulated to turn against their own interests, the best interests of their country?   The answer is the standard one - the Big Lie.

Many years ago Pierre Berton told a television interviewer that he considered the greatest difference between Canadians and Americans to be our belief systems.  Berton explained that Americans had a powerful, almost obsessive need to believe which left them more willing to submit to authority.  At the time I found that hard to believe considering that we Canadians seemed to be the docile, peaceful bunch.

Now it has become clear that I was confusing cultural value differences with susceptibility to authoritarianism.  The 21st century has repeatedly shown that most Americans, despite their pretensions of  individualism and liberty, are a fragile bunch, easily inflamed by fear and anger, who actually hold their freedoms quite cheaply.  No one today even questions the Patriot Act and that is, frankly, astonishing.

Had Canadians been enfeebled with our American cousins' susceptibility to authoritarianism, Stephen Harper would today be ruling with a massive majority.   Many Harperites do seem afflicted with the powerful need to believe that serves the Canadian neo-conservatives.  But the majority of us are quite reasonably skeptical of the prime minister and his agenda.  That may be all that's holding an American-style oligarchic takeover at bay in the True North.

Every con man knows the rewards of a lie successfully told.   The confidence man uses lies to induce his victims to act against their self-interest for his unjust benefit.  We find that so egregious that we have made it a crime punishable by imprisonment.  We support victims through special civil remedies that help them trace and recover their purloined property.  Yet when it comes to the truly harmful deceit, the Big Lie, the crime goes unpunished even though the damage, deliberately inflicted on the entire society, may be enormous.

Imagine if the rich and powerful, the emerging oligarchs, knew they would be liable to criminal and civil punishments for hoodwinking their society.  They're willing to ruin their society's welfare for their own financial gain.   It is why they manipulate the gullible to fight environmental and financial regulation by inducing them to  fear their liberty, their very democracy is at risk if they don't.  This is fraud on the grandest scale but we will not punish it as such.

I know a lot of us would dearly like to see global warming denialists, who perpetuate unfounded, disproven falsehoods to manipulate and confuse the public, held accountable.   What if the fossil fuelers were held liable in damages for the loss they have inflicted on the country through their contrivances?  But they don't fear being held accountable because they know, if the lie is big enough, it always goes unpunished.  Yet so long as the Big Lie is such a richly rewarding proposition it will continue to vex us and our children and grandchildren unless and until we come to our senses and force these people to stop.

When Everybody Looks Like a Scumbag

Like most of us, I got mildly immersed in the WikiLeaks/New York Times - Guardian - Der Spiegel disclosure of American diplomatic missives.  At first it was like peeking into the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy but, before long, I found it just saddening.

I guess that's how America's powers-that-be see the rest of the world - duplicitous, venal, craven, utterly unfaithful.  The WikiLeaks diplo-dump was mildly interesting - at first - but as it droned on and on, the sheer weight of it became a bit oppressive, even suffocating.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being the very best, the American diplomatic communiques seem to depict a world in which other nations rank anywhere from a mid-five to a one-minus.   The American vision, to the extent these memos reflect that accurately, is profoundly bleak and well beyond simply cautious or even negative.

I'm left wondering whether the Americans aren't seeing the rest of the world very much as that world has come to see them.   Ever since the Bush/Cheney cancer set in and metastasized, America's standing in the world has taken a hit from which it has shown little interest in recovering.   Sure we greeted Obama and prayed his election would even America's keel but the American right, political and media, heeled over even harder, further.

The tone I discerned that was relatively constant through these documents was of a country that feels itself besieged, betrayed and unappreciated.

Maybe, just maybe, America has more to learn, stands to gain more than anyone else from the WikiLeaks scandal.  Maybe America badly needs to take a brutally honest look at what's wrong with the way it sees the world.  It could just be that America could be the big winner.

Foretelling America's Passing

If the United States falls off its perch, no one will be able to claim it came as a surprise.   The warnings have come from all corners and they've been loud and clear.  Bacevich, Zinn, Chalmers Johnson, and so many others have put a spotlight on their America and shown it on the path to the end of the Republic.

Their warnings are reinforced by Tom Friedman's latest opinion piece in the New York Times, in which he observes how the WikiLeaks docu-dump reveals how America's global influence has waned thanks to its addiction to Middle Eastern oil and Chinese credit.

Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home. But our politics never connects the two.

Think how different our conversations with Saudi Arabia would be if we were in the process of converting to electric cars powered by nuclear, wind, domestic natural gas and solar power? We could tell them that if we detect one more dollar of Saudi money going to the Taliban then they can protect themselves from Iran.

Think how different our conversations with China would be if we had had a different savings rate the past 30 years and China was not holding $900 billion in U.S. Treasury securities — but was still dependent on the U.S. economy and technology. We would not be begging them to revalue their currency, and maybe our request that China prevent North Korea from shipping ballistic missile parts to Iran via Beijing airport (also in the cables) wouldn’t be rebuffed so brusquely.

And in today's Asia Times Online, A.W. McCoy writes that America's decline could actually come in the form of a surprise collapse.

If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Future historians are likely to identify the George W Bush administration's rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall.


...Under current projections, the United States will find itself in second place behind China (already the world's second largest economy) in economic output around 2026, and behind India by 2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America's current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated younger generation.

By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire. It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington's last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence.

McCoy's piece is a thoughtful examination of what lies ahead for the United States and the rest of the world, notably China and India in what was to have been the "new American century." 

And, on this theme, I'll leave you with Bill Maher's appearance on yesterday's Fareed Zakaria GPS.  It's well worth watching:

You're Either With Us Or You're With the Terrorists Or You Sell Us Oil

It seems that playing footsie with al Qaeda is okay with Washington, as long as America thirsts for your oil.   Back during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, prominent and noble Saudis funneled truckloads of cash to the mujaheddin and especially their own boy, Osama bin Laden.

Then came the embassy bombings, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and finally the 9/11 attacks - carried out by Saudi Islamists.   The obvious answer to that was to invade Iraq.  What?  But surely the House of Saud has learned its lesson and broken with al Qaeda, right?   Wrong.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tags Saudi Arabia as the major funder of outfits like al Qaeda and the Taliban.   Iraq's Shiite majority government in Baghdad also considers Saudi Arabia a much greater threat to Iraq than Iran could ever be.

Runners-up in the terrorism funding game are Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.  Yes, that Kuwait, the one the West liberated from Saddam.

Oddly enough there's been not a whimper out of Sarah Palin, John McCain or Newt Gingrich about leveling the Gulf oil states.  Hypocrisy?  Ya think?

"No One Believes in Afghanistan Any More" - E.U. President

A diplomatic memo released by WikiLeaks quotes the E.U. President, Herman van Rompuy, as claiming that European forces remain in Afghanistan solely out of deference to the United States.

“Europe is doing it and will go along out of deference to the United States but not out of deference to Afghanistan,” the memo said citing Mr. Van Rompuy. 

“No one believes in Afghanistan any more.”

America's European allies contribute about 30,000 troops to the U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan.