Two Out of Three Nations (Including the US) Will Be Highly Vulnerable to Climate Change by 2030

Unless we do something very significant, very soon to arrest global warming, two-thirds of the world's countries will become "highly vulnerable" to climate change by 2030.

The "climate vulnerability monitor" rates 132-nations as highly susceptible to climate-change threats including health; weather disasters; human habitat loss from rising seas and desertification; and economic stresses on natural resources and other relevant sectors.

Most of Europe is safe but not so the United States.  The US and Spain are slated to be highly vulnerable mainly due to habitat loss.  The report notes the greatest impact will be sustained by the poorest countries and the most vulnerable groups, including children.

This warning comes as, across the world, the public's interest in global warming continues to wane.  In case you're confused, that's not good.  Der Spiegel says public apathy has become so worrisome, the green movement is looking for ways to make the issue sexy.   Yeah, good luck with that.

Arms Race Update - China Won't Rule Out Nuclear First Strike

It sounds a bit like the American mantra of "all options are on the table."  China has amended it's "no first strike" nuclear weapons policy.  In a document ominously entitled "Lowering the Threshold of Nuclear Threats",  China now reserves the right to resort to nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed power attacking its cities or infrastructure.

The People's Liberation Army's Second Artillery Corps, which oversees China's strategic nuclear force, "  will adjust the nuclear threat policy if a nuclear missile-possessing country carries out a series of airstrikes against key strategic targets in our country with absolutely superior conventional weapons,"   the policy states.

China's military "  must carefully consider"   a nuclear response to conventional-weapon attacks within the nation's borders, according to the documents. Targets that could draw such a response include any of China's leading urban centers or its atomic or hydroelectric power facilities, according to the documents. Any strikes posing an existential threat to the Chinese government could also merit a nuclear retaliation, they add.

 Beijing would first warn the opposing power of a possible nuclear response through television, the Internet or other communication channels, says the policy.

I haven't done an "arms race update" post for quite some time.  It's not for want of developments to report.  It's more reflective of a perceived indifference we've accepted to these things since the advent of nuclear proliferation.  There's all manner of things happening.   China is starting to push India's buttons over Kashmir.  The two country's border dispute is heating up.  Pakistan tested a new nuclear missile a few days ago.   India followed up by announcing plans to extend the range of its own intermediate-range nuclear missile.  Israel is now planning to send missile-warning to its people via their smart phones.  And this is all just from the last few days.

Twenty years ago most of these developments would have been big news.   Today, we don't even hear of them.  I wonder what that means?

What US Progressives Dared to Dream Just Six Years Ago

American progressives, Democrat and Republican, really believed their country was on the brink of reformation prior to the 2004 elections.  They thought their nation could soon be put back on an even keel.  That was clear from an article published in the August, 2004 edition of Harper's, """  Liberalism Revived."

The article presented a forum discussion with progressives Ron D. Daniels, Eric Foner, Ralph Nader, Kevin Phillips, Frances Fox Piven and Harper's editor Lewis Lapham.   It's much too long to transcript in a blog entry but I thought you might appreciate a few excerpts from the progressive viewpoint of 2004.

Nader:  Robert Frost once defined a liberal as someone who has trouble arguing his own case.  If you look at the history of our country, the major justice movements have been colored liberal, and their opponents have been colored conservative.  Social Security, trade unions, slavery, and so on.  But the Democrats never talk about their victories.

Daniels:  Instead the word "  liberal' is a word that the Democrats distance themselves from.  They avoid it as if it were the plague.

Phillips:  ...Democrats have been anaesthetized by campain contributions.  And I should add that they have been anesthetized cheaply.  During the last twenty or twenty-five years, the Republicans have been able to take money for granted, but the democrats know they need to get it, and so they've become willing to soften their language and back away from their convictions.  Their neediness cripples them.  ...The Republicans have so many weaknesses that the Democrats can't exploit, because they have taken a second, smaller helping from the same trough.  What hands you a political opportunity in the United States is when something goes very wrong for the people who have power.  Today the Republicans are in trouble, and the main thing they have to keep them from imploding is that the Democrats are not much better.


Piven:  ...We should talk about reclaiming democracy by reducing corporate power and reducing inequality, especially the inequalities that affect working people and poor people.


Nader:  The impassioned political argument in American society today should be the one over the sovereignty of corporations and their entrenchment into every institutional system.  The giant multinational corporations set the parpameters and the paradigms.  They get into kids' minds at age two, or three, or four.  Every day another frontier falls to commerical intrusion.  And when that happens, we begin to lose our sovereignty.  We slowly lose the structure we have developed to defend the people, which is our national government.


Daniels:  We need to talk to one another and put together a methodical, relentless message.  When we go on the various talk shows, the people from the right are always better prepared.  We're there trying to improvise in the moment, because our think tanks haven't prepared us to put the right message on the table.


Phillips (on building a progressive majority):  Obviously you would need a party standing for something that these people don't see either party as standing for anymore.  The non-voters who could be swayed are, I would venture to say, people who today would say - rightly - that there is no longer a party of Roosevelt or Truman.

Foner:  ...some of the progressive issues mentioned here wouldn't attract anywhere near a majority of Americans today.  But we have to put those issues out on the table.  To insist on a living wage or to demand international justice is not going to win an electoral majority yet, but that doesn't mean it's any less important to stage the protests.  If you can change the nature of the public discourse, then the politics will follow.   ...You don't start off as if you're running for office and say, we can't get elected on these issues and therefore we had better compromise immediately.

...Specific crises, whether the slavery issue in the 1850s or the economic crisis of the Great Depression, shatter the boundaries of political dialogue, but there is always a long period of ideological gestation.  The abolitionists were not a very large group, but they had a tremendous impact in changing northern opinion about slavery, long before that change was reflected in politics.  So one of the things that progressives need to concentrate on, I think, is the formulation of a new set of perspectives, rather than simply worrying about the next election.

There was a great deal of hope in these voices back in 2004 but I wonder how differently they would see America today.  Their message, however, even if no longer palatable to 21st century Democrats in a "bought and paid for" Congress, remains relevant to today's Liberals who are often losing the same battles for the very same reasons.  Progressivism is the beating heart of a strong democracy.  It's time the Liberals reminded themselves of that.

And They Wonder Why These Guys Fire Rockets at Them.

Another WikiLeaks disclosure.

"As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge,"   one of the cables read.

Israel wanted the coastal territory's economy "  functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis,"   according to the November 3, 2008 cable.

When will Israel realize that it cannot hope for peace through punishing the Palestinian people?  It hasn't worked.  It's not going to work.  The only thing Israel is getting out of this is a pretext for occupying the West Bank and expanding its settlements there.  Putting up with a few unguided rockets of minimal lethality is a small price to be paid for that.

Could 2011 Be America's "Make or Break" Year?

It's hard to figure out what's likely to give out first in America - its democracy or its economy.  Both are under great pressure.   Both are rent by destructive forces.  Today's America bears as little resemblance to the once dynamic country as Disneyland's "Sleeping Beauty Castle" does to Ludwig's Neuschwanstein.

Whether we're willing to admit it or not, America and, to a lesser extent, Canada and the balance of the West have embarked on a period of decline.   The 21st may, in fact, become a century of decline.

Look at it this way.  When it comes to renewable resources, man is already exhausting the annual supply.  In fact we're keeping our fantasy going by rapaciously consuming our historical, sometimes ancient reserves.  The evidence of this abounds.   It is visible from space.  It comes in the form of deforestation and desertification and dried up lakes and rivers.  It also comes in less visible forms such as the emptying of ancient aquifers of their once vast holdings of freshwater.  So rapacious has become our consumption that man now exhausts a year's supply of renewables by mid-August.

So, even as we've hit the wall on renewable resources, the earth's carrying-capacity, we have to make room at the table for these newly emerging super-economies.  That's right, they want more too, a lot more and they're fixing to get it wherever they can.

We don't see these emerging rivals at work - not yet - but they are very busy.  They're busy sewing up Africa.  They're busy cementing their hold in Asia and firming up their links in the Caucasus and the Middle East.  They're even beginning to make inroads into South America.   You may not see them, might not feel their presence but that's because - we're last.  They can get what they want playing by our rules because we wrote those rules for the people who had all the money back when that was us.

America stands at a crossroads.  Right now it needs the strongest, most cohesive society possible.  Yet the American Right has left the country atrophied and deeply divided.  The Huffington Post's Sam Harris asks whether his country stands on the verge of ruination.  It's a fascinating article, replete with references to reports and studies that collectively reinforce his warnings.  If you can find the time I'd urge you to read it.  After all, when you're a branch plant operation you need to keep an eye on the health of the head office.

The United States is set for a relapse of the Republican disease that has laid the country low since it became infected with Reaganism three decades ago.  Reaganism in the 21st century is akin to urging a lung cancer patient to double his habit to two packs a day.  Yet this is exactly what is happening in America today.  The illusion that Reganism made sense might have been sellable when he took over from Jimmy Carter.  Back then America was the greatest creditor nation in the world, still the world's industrial powerhouse.  The Soviet Union back then was teetering on the edge of its own demise and China was an agrarian poorhouse.  Carter saw the changes coming.  He warned his countrymen that America's future depended on them mending their ways to meet the coming change.  Reagan, instead, sold them the lie that the way ahead was plenty more of the same, no matter the cost.  The movement conservative Republicans have been locked into perpetuating that lie even today and almost certainly tomorrow too.

I suspect America could indeed stand on the verge of its own ruination, particularly if, as Harris points out, the conditions that could trigger it are maintained and nurtured by the resurgent Republicans.  With the Republicans sawing their legs off beneath them, it's difficult to see how American society is going to stand up to what's coming.

The British Government Has Done It. The Aussies Too. Why Won't Steve Harper?

Every coastal nation knows that people like to live along shorelines.   Oh sure there are people willing to live in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but most of us live within a short hop of the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Arctic Ocean or the Great Lakes.   These are places where we build ports, where we start and end railway lines and highways.  They're also places where we build our biggest cities.

But coastal development carries risks.   One that we didn't foresee was climate change-driven, sea level rise.  No one can be sure just how much global sea levels will rise this century from the loss of glaciers and melting icepacks.   A very conservative estimate is at least one metre.  At the worrisome end of the scale are estimates of many metres, possibly tens of metres.

A generally conservative mind would look for something between the best case scenario and a mid-range estimate - two metres, possibly three?  Then you overlay your chosen figure on existing topographical maps to chart out areas of possible submergence and those at risk of inundation from periodic high tides and storm surges.   That gives you extremely valuable information you can release well in advance to local authorities and the public.   That gives them essential time to review adaptation strategies and to decide which areas are at such risk that they should be off-limits to further development.

The Brits released this very sort of information to their people two years ago.  Last month the Australians produced "inundation maps" focusing on low-lying areas of Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, south-east Queensland and the NSW central coast and Hunter regions.

We know L'il Stevie Harper is settled in landlocked Alberta so he probably doesn't have to fret about any of this but what about the rest of us?  What about all the Canadians in the Maritimes or those living along the shores of the Great Lakes?   What about coastal BC'ers?  Why aren't we getting this information?  That's the federal government's job.  This is exactly the sort of thing for which we pay taxes.  And if the Harper government is stalling, why isn't the supposed opposition going after them.   Is this what you get when you live in a petro-state?

The Sky IS Falling

It drew wide media coverage a few days ago when 5,000 dead blackbirds dropped onto Beebe, Arkansas.  Around the same time, 80,000 drum fish went belly up in the nearby Arkansas River.

Word is out today that 500 red-wing blackbirds fell dead along a rural road in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.   And in Falkopeing, Sweden, dozens of dead jackdaws fell into a residential street.

I'm guessing that these limited, mass kill-offs happen more often than the media lets on but hundreds of birds falling on one street or one rural road?  To me that begs some explanation.

Food. That's Right, Just Food.

When you've got plenty of it, it doesn't really matter.  But food is coming to matter - a lot - because there are masses of people who either can't find enough or who simply can't afford to buy what's stacked up right before their eyes.   The number of these unfortunates is growing every year and, for them, 2011 is not shaping up to be kind.

One thing we know about food is that money talks.   Rich countries not only get better access to global food stocks but they even get to meddle in poor nations' food production policies.

In some cases rich countries can even destroy a global food resource.   A reminder of that came this morning in Tokyo where one fish, a single bluefin tuna, fetched just over $390,000 Cdn.  That's right, one fish, 342 kg., just shy of four hundred grand.   When the Japanese are ready, willing and able to fork over more than a grand for a kilo of bluefin what do you think the chances are for the remaining, already endangered stocks?

The Brits are very sensitive to global food shortages.  That's because Britain produces less than a fifth of its food.  For the other four-fifths, it depends on foreign food stocks.  There are a few problems with that.   One is that food production in some of the supplier nations is no longer as reliable as it once was.  Climate change is taking its toll, plain and simple, particularly in the tropics and southern hemisphere.  

Some countries that have enjoyed historic bounties now experience a lot more bad years when their production may not even meet domestic demand.  Now if your country had a bad harvest and wasn't able to deliver enough to feed your family, how would you react to your leaders selling their already inadequate food stocks to richer buyers overseas?   You would naturally expect your government to suspend food exports to protect its own people, right?  Well the Brits sure think so and it's got them on the warpath.

Britain's oh-so Conservative environment secretary, a lady named Caroline Spelman, is infuriated at nations that would have the gall to block food exports to feed their own instead of feeding gaping Brit maws.  And, according to The Guardian, she wants something done about it, now:

"As global demand for food rises and as international food markets open up, the risk increases of wrong-headed protectionism. In some cases this has already happened – we just have to cast our mind back to the late summer and the ban on Russian and Ukrainian grain exports.

"  I would like to work with France to seek an end to export bans – one of the most restrictive practices found in the world market,"   she said at the Oxford farming conference today.

Unfortunately, the United Nations is warning that 2011 is poised to set another record for global food prices.  We're already at the awful levels experienced in 2008.  Virtually all the world's major grain producers - Russia, the Ukraine, Canada, Argentina, the U.S. and Australia - have all had weather-related problems.   Weather being weather, not climate, it is still too early to tell what conditions will be come the planting and growing season.   But Ms. Spelman's demands to make food export bans illegal show that the great Western dependencies are jittery.

Happy New Year

And, in the spirit of the season, this from the legendary humanitarian, Ricky Gervais:

Don't Hate Conservatives, Their Brains Just Don't Work Right

Actually their brains do work right, sort of.  A study by University College London has found the brains of conservatives are quite different from those of liberals.

Scientists have found that people with conservative views have brains with larger amygdalas, almond shaped areas in the centre of the brain often associated with anxiety and emotions.

On the otherhand, they have a smaller anterior cingulate, an area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life.

The "  exciting"  correlation was found by scientists at University College London who scanned the brains of two members of parliament and a number of students.

They found that the size of the two areas of the brain directly related to the political views of the volunteers. 

So let's stop getting so angry at cons.  It's not their fault their amygdalas, their fear receptors, are so damned big.  They're born cowards.  And it's not our fault either that they also got dealt a puny anterior cingulate, the courage generator.  It's no wonder with brains wired for a surplus of fear and a deficiency of courage that these people flock to a thug like Stephen Harper.  They're his for the plucking.  It's not their fault, they were born that way.

According to Salon.com, conservatives are reacting to the study quite predictably - by claiming that evidence of their enlarged amygdalas (the fear centre) is proof of their mental superiority, conveniently ignoring the matter of their shrunken anterior cingulate cortex (the bravery centre).

Predictably, conservatives have jumped on both studies as an indication of their biological superiority. Across the right-leaning blogosphere and twitterverse, DRD4 was cited as the underlying cause of the "mental illness" known as liberalism; and some conservative tweeters have even tried to claim that the enlarged amygdala just means that conservatives "have bigger brains." Of course, the first claim begs the question, and the second ignores the shrunken anterior cingulate.

While the extent of the differences is still unclear, the biology of politics has begun to confirm that those differences are real.

NATO - One Foot In the Boat, One Foot On the Dock

And the boat, it seems, is sailing and Washington has the helm.  By some troubling accounts, the Obama administration may be poised to succeed where the Bush regime could not, in co-opting NATO as its permanent Foreign Legion.

Asia Times' M K Bhadrakumar, a former diplomat in India's foreign service, warns that the idea that Washington is looking for an exit strategy to leave Afghanistan is an illusion.  He argues that the recently reborn NATO Mark 2 is poised to maintain a permanent and powerful presence in what once we considered the most distant corners of the world:

 Quite obviously, the alliance is well on the way to transforming into a global political-military role, and it is forward-looking. There are skeptical voices still that in an era of European austerity, a question mark ought to be put on the alliance's ambitions. European cutbacks in military deployment and rigorous savings programs in defense budgets should not be overplayed, either. NATO is by far today the most powerful military and political alliance in the world.

The US has always been the main provider of the alliance's budget - almost 75% currently - as well as its " hard power."    The perceived widening of the US-Europe " divide",   however, presents a complex scenario as regards the alliance's evolution as a security organization in the 21st century.

As NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen underlined at the Lisbon summit, " The United States would look elsewhere for its security partner."   A kind of " division of labor"   in international interventions becomes necessary for the US. The Iraq war showed that it is already happening.

The various partnership programs of NATO in Central Asia and the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Mediterranean regions can be viewed as part of the overall approach to take recourse to other states or groups of states to promote the Euro-Atlantic interests globally.

...The core task will be to defend Europe and ensure the collective security of its 28 members, while the Strategic Concept envisages NATO's prerogative to mount expeditionary operations globally.

The document explicitly says, " Where conflict prevention proves unsuccessful, NATO will be prepared and capable to manage ongoing hostilities. NATO has unique conflict-management capacities, including the unparalleled capability to deploy and sustain robust military forces in the field."


The article points out that NATO's muscular global reach comes at an awkward moment when America's and Europe's historical dominance is confronted by the ascendant giants - particularly China, India and Russia.   For some reason, we seem intent on playing in their backyard.   And we'll be doing it on NATO's terms, not the UNs.

From a seemingly reluctant arrival in Afghanistan seven years ago in an "out-of-area" operation as part of the UN-mandated ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], with a limited mandate, NATO is suo moto stepping out of the ISAF, deepening its presence and recasting its role and activities on a long-term basis. South Asian security will never be the same again.

To quote Zbigniew Brzezinski, " Whether they are "  rising peacefully"   (a self-confident China), truculently (an imperially nostalgic Russia) or boastfully (an assertive India, despite its internal multiethnic and religious vulnerabilities), they all desire a change in the global pecking order. The future conduct of an relationship among these three still relatively cautious revisionist powers will further intensify the strategic uncertainty."






From a seemingly reluctant arrival in Afghanistan seven years ago in an "out-of-area" operation as part of the UN-mandated ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], with a limited mandate, NATO is suo moto stepping out of the ISAF, deepening its presence and recasting its role and activities on a long-term basis. South Asian security will never be the same again.

At the Lisbon summit, NATO and Afghanistan signed a declaration as partners. The UN didn't figure in this, and it is purely bilateral in content. The main thrust of the declaration is to affirm their "  long-term partnership" and to build "  a robust, enduring partnership which complements the ISAF security mission and continues beyond it."



Does this explain why certain Canadian politicians have pushed for Canada to retain a toehold in Afghanistan, pointless as that seems?  Have we signaled, from both the Conservative and Liberal ranks, that Canada is onside with this "enduring" (i.e. indefinite) military adventure in South Asia?   Is this Michael Ignatieff's definition of "muscular foreign policy"?   Is this radical policy shift something that was appropriately done with a wink and a nod by the prime minister and opposition leader?


If this is the direction NATO is headed and if Canada has signed on for the voyage, that would be news to a lot of Canadians and it would seem to ignore their, by now, clearly and repeatedly stated opposition to the ongoing Afghan mission.

How the Man From Mars Would See Canadian Democracy

British Columbia has a rich history of producing cantankerous old men, gruff and outspoken.  One of today's classics is Rafe Mair, former lawyer, Social Credit cabinet minister, radio talk show host and now senior columnist for The Tyee.

In Monday's Tyee, Mair admitted he's a Liberal in a country that has forgotten what that is supposed to mean.  He then explains how the MFM - or Man From Mars - would see Canada and our democracy.   Here are a few examples:

A visiting Man from Mars would see a talk shop with the semblance of popular control but would observe that it was an illusion. The only person with less impact on decision making than opposition backbenchers are those on the government benches. He would see a Canadian system which since 1873 has only seen one government, federal or provincial, fall when it had a majority -- and that before party discipline had taken hold. The notion of "responsible" government, where a majority government is actually subject to the parliament is a hoax in the same class as a belief in Santa Claus.

...Our Man from Mars would look at how we run our business affairs and would be struck by the way large pools of capital form themselves into corporations that can't be controlled. How would we expect them to be controlled when the people who want nice comfy laws finance the governing party which makes up the rules?

...MFM would see that when corporations are held to account by some government or hearing or another that the fix is in. He would note the British Columbia environmental public hearings and stifle a guffaw as he sees how the government and the corporation are in partnership to stifle any questions that go to the root of the matter by calling them out of order. He would no doubt see that the only difference between China and Canada in this regard is the Canada holds hearings that don't matter and China simply doesn't hold meetings.


Our Man from Mars would see that labour unions, once a strong factor in the business community,  ...are largely unable to do much more than unions in the old Soviet Union could do. The private sector's principal source of labour now comes from cheap labour in foreign countries where the workers are worse off than a coal miner in 19th century England, so that local workers are happy to have any job whatever the pay and conditions.

MFM would see how the law prevents citizens to protest by permitting corporations to turn a common law action into a criminal act of " contempt" and throw the protesters in jail.

 And finally, and fittingly, Mair turns his attention to the weeds in his own backyard - press freedom in a nation that has tolerated the corporatization of its final bastion of democratic freedom.

Freedom of the press is, or rather was, the bulwark against oppression. It is called the " fourth estate"   because in the 18th century Edmund Burke saw the press as the proper force against abuse by the three " estates"   of government, the House of Commons, The House of Lords, and the Clergy.


To maintain this freedom has not been easy, and now it has all but disappeared, because the newspapers, TV and radio are controlled by big business which defends itself and the government that supports it by censorship in two ways: owners only hire publishers and editors that permit the official " truth"   to be uttered, and journalists who want to survive self-censor in order to keep their jobs.

A good example is in British Columbia.


From 1991-2001 the NDP government was rigorously held to account by media outlets. One columnist almost alone exposed a huge government debacle over some expensive and unsuitable ferries. This was scarcely the only issue where the government's feet were held firmly to the fire.

From 2001-1010 a " corporation"   party, the Liberals, have been given a free ride by the media with only this paper and one or two other " outside"  outlets providing free speech where writers like me and many better ones can write what they want subject only to the laws of defamation.

You Liberals may think that Mair is a raving socialist, not one of your own kind.  In fact, he's the real Liberal, not the modern party and its leaders and supporters who have meekly yielded to the convenience and benefits of corporatism.  And Mair is dead right on the demise of  press freedom from the scourges of concentration of ownership and cross-ownership, the keys to corporate control that stifles voices and filters opinion.

Corporatism has run absolutely amok in the US and, once again, while we lag well behind we're trending in the same direction but you'll never hear the very word "corporatism" crossing the lips of today's political leadership.   What we see instead is a society degraded by their betrayals, its cohesion eroded and rent by the powerful elixir of lies and wedge politics.   Does it not tell you Liberals In Name Only (LINOs) something that, in a country so badly in need of reform on so many fronts, your leadership offers up meaningless pap about arts funding or daycare?

If you think I'm making this up, go back to the roster of speakers at Iggy's "thinkers' conference" and find out how many of those supposed thinkers were CEO's and management consultants.   Just go through the list, tally them up, and then draw your own conclusions.

I think I agree with Mair that being a Liberal today is best served by keeping the party itself at arm's length where you'll find the MFM view.

My New Year's Resolution

This year I am resolved to work to find ways to arrest the steady Americanization of my country.   The United States is, to Canada, a black hole that, unless we begin to change course, will soon exert an irresistible pull on us.

Money talks, whether in the US, Canada or anywhere else for that matter.  It always has, it always will.   However sometimes money talks too loudly, a bit too forcefully.  This often occurs when the interests of money and society conflict.

Money has been instrumental in degrading the very voice of society, democracy, in the United States.  It has achieved a "bought and paid for" Congress to do its bidding, undermining the financial, health, and environmental regulatory bulwarks that empower and defend society against the excesses of money.  The kingpins of money have asserted an alternative reality through control of communication and the dissemination of perverted messaging that leaps the divide from partisanship on into rank propaganda.   Money has restored segregation to the US, this time wealth and privilege-based instead of race-based (the latter no longer serving any useful purpose).   The growth in wealth and prosperity now accrues to the monied class just as landed nobles once asserted an exclusive right to take stags as they kept their serfs in a permanent state of penury.    Money has shuttered America's factories.  It has choked the bastion of American democracy, the middle class, and impressed it into the irons of debt.

This is what awaits our Canada unless we reject our current crop of leaders and their empty vision.  One by one they seek to tilt the helm to align our policies and practices to those of the US, warning us that if we don't we may not be able to share in America's promise and prosperity.  We risk being left behind. What?  Say What?

Left behind?  Great and the sooner and further, the better.   Canada needs to find its own course, the route that takes us where we want to go, where we need to be.   Traveling with our immensely larger neighbour has definite advantages and conveniences but it would be foolish to assume our paths are destined to be coterminous.  We need to understand the disadvantages and perils and see them as clearly as we see the benefits for, without that, we sacrifice perspective and balance.

America in the 21st century is no longer on the same heading as the America we knew in decades past, the America we grew accustomed to admiring and following.  We need to grasp those distinctions in order weigh the costs and consequences of continuing to blithely tag along.

We are already paying a real price for trying to stay lockstep with America's pace.   The gap between rich and poor is widening and accelerating and it should be no comfort that, in this, we're still well behind the US.  We are going in the same direction.   Under the mantra of needing to "stay competitive" we keep bringing our taxation, monetary and resource policies into line with America's.   For the sake of supposedly staying competitive we're even willing to allow the US to prescribe our border security practices to enhance not our security but theirs.   Staying competitive is beginning to take too large a bite out of our very sovereignty.

It would help immensely if we would always keep in mind that America has been many different things at different times.   The America we see today bears great distinctions from Americas past just as it will from the America that will be in two decades from now or the America of the late 21st century.   In my lifetime alone America has gone from an ascendant power to a leader of a multi-polar world to the master of a unipolar world to today's brink of descent at the advent of a new, multi-polar world.

As Andrew Bacevich and the late Chalmers Johnson point out, today's America, with but five per cent of the world's population, spends more on its military, industrial and civilian warfighting complex than the defence budgets of the rest of the world combined.   That is an act of desperation, not an expression of assured self-confidence.  That is an America given over to madness.   That is an America heading for the shoals of reckoning.   Yet this is the America for which we should contort our own country, our own society to conform?

We're sort of nudged into compliance with the notion that, if we don't conform, it will not go well for us.   Parting company with American policy will be painful for the Canadian people, our economy and our nation.  That is unquestionably true, but to what extent?  Here is where we return to the need for sound perspective and measured balance.

If we choose not to conform it won't go well for us.   But does that establish the corollary that, if we do conform, it will go well for us?  Of course not, that would be ludicrous to assume and yet we act on that very assumption.

Let's ask the simple question of how well are those American policies, to which our leaders tell us we must conform to "stay competitive", how well are they serving the American people?   The question practically answers itself.  It answers itself in the state of American healthcare.   It answers itself in America's bloated penitentiary system.   It answers itself in the epidemic of debilitating debt that infects the country at the federal, state, municipal, corporate and individual levels.  It answers itself in the burgeoning military, industrial and commercial warfighting complex.  It answers itself in the chasm of the rich-poor divide.   It answers itself in blue and white collar wage stagnation in the face of substantial productivity gains.   It answers itself in the demise of America's middle class and the collapse of social mobility.

It answers itself in America's pain.

If these policies are serving Americans so poorly, what outcomes do they hold for us if we allow our leaders to rejig Canadian society to conform to them for the sake of "staying competitive"?   America isn't staying competitive, with anyone.   That is manifest from its chronic balance of trade and balance of payment deficits, from its unending dependency on foreign borrowing, from its declining educational standards, from its emerging oligarchy, from its corrupt government and from the dismemberment of its system of checks and balances by a politicized judiciary.

It seems our leaders are incapable of the vision needed to lead Canadians to their own destiny.  They need role models to emulate.  Yet, for convenience, they choose perhaps the most dysfunctional.   I was drawn to an article in AlterNet, "America in Decline, Why Germans Think We're Insane."   It's another piece from an American ex-pat who had to go abroad in order to see America clearly.  It speaks volumes.

And so this New Year I resolve to do what I can to keep my country from embracing America's dementia.  It's a big job and we all have a lot of making up to do.   Any takers?

An Alternative To Petroleum Fuels?

Let's hope this works and let's hope it's scaleable.   Researchers at CalTech have developed a solar reactor that produces a liquid fuel that could be used in place of gasoline or diesel.   It's based on cerium, an element as abundant as copper.

Cerium reacts to heat by shedding its oxygen molecules.   As it cools it will draw oxygen molecules from water, releasing hydrogen.  Liquefy the hydrogen and you have a fine fuel for internal combustion engine technology that emits - no, not CO2, H20 - water.

The CalTech folks think this should be an affordable alternative to fossil fuels.  It could also erase the last refuge of fossil fuels - the transportation problem.  Cars and trucks can easily run on hydrogen.   The solar/cerium reactor may just fill the niche in the alternative fuel mix.

The Truth May Not Set You Free After All

You've probably heard about the recent study out of  the University of Maryland that found FOX News viewers to be more misinformed than those who received their news anywhere else and that the more a viewer watched FOX the more misinformed that viewer became.

It isn't hard to conclude that FOX and its clones are in the business of warping public opinion by feeding misinformation to their audiences.   Of course that's pernicious, diabolical even, but aren't these uber-right propaganda mills running a grave risk of losing those audiences if and when they discover the truth and that they have been had?   Here's the worrisome part - they're not.

A previous study out of the University of Michigan by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler found that the political misperceptions sown by outfits like FOX are extremely difficult to correct with factual information and, worse still, those who have been misled (brainwashed) may even deepen their misperceptions (dig in their heels) when presented with contrary, truthful information.  Nyhan and Reifler call this the "backfire effect."

When you couple the Nyhan/Reifler study to the University of Maryland research it pretty much erases any lingering doubt that some purported news outlets really are quite powerful misinformation agencies in service to some very anti-democratic interests.   They don't seek to inform merely from a particular partisan perspective but to confound, to confuse and mislead that segment of the electorate susceptible to their techniques.

We see the grotesque results of these techniques in the faces of the Tea Partiers or at Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck rallies.   When confronted with facts, clear truth, contrary to the misinformation they've been fed, they recoil angrily like vampires cast out into the noonday sun.   There you see the backfire effect in operation.   That is how you get blue collar workers riled up in support of tax cuts for the rich.   That is how you get ordinary people to see universal health care as an assault on their democratic freedoms.

Of course it's but a minority of the American public that is susceptible to this form of brainwashing.  The purveyors of this misinformation industry know that but, unlike the conservative Right that once coddled and colluded with them, the misinformers have always understood the enormous power of those they held in their sway.   David Frum referred to this when he quipped that the Bush Republicans thought that FOX News worked for them until they discovered that the tables had turned and they had come to serve FOX.

I suppose you can call it the "stampede effect" that we witnessed in full force in the 2008 mid-term elections.   The deliberately misinformed were herded into their own movement, the Tea Party, that rose up to capture several Republican congressional nominations from establishment candidates.   Faced with strong, Tea Party rivals, some, like John McCain, were compelled to jettison principle and integrity and adopt Tea Party platforms to save their political necks.

Of course you can't have a stampede without a herd of cattle and you can't form a herd without cowboys riding the range.   And, when it comes to this herd, the cowboys come with names like Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck and Palin.  And of course the herd never suspects where the drovers are taking it - straight to the stockyards and slaughterhouses, the very abattoirs of democracy.

Hey Steve, Pat Robertson Called. He Says It's Time to Decriminalize Pot and Scrap Mandatory Sentencing

Memo to Stephen Harper.  Even your fellow religious zealots get it.  Decriminalize pot.  Scrap mandatory minimum sentencing.

Douchebag of the Year

F-35 Update - The Non-Stealthy Stealth Fighter

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has one, very costly advantage.   It is invisible to radar.  It's designed to have such a small radar cross-section that enemy aircraft won't be able to electronically detect it.  Of course that's a great thing to have but it's only relevant to actions against countries that field an air defence threat.  In Afghanistan, for example, it wouldn't make a hoot of difference.

The F-35 bomb truck, like its superlative fighter big brother, the F-22, uses a combination of shapes and materials to defeat X-band radars, until now the military standard around the world.   But the nations that produce the aircraft the F-35 would have to meet and defeat have come up with a work around, L-band radar.


What if a fighter aircraft was fitted with a sensor system, which operates outside the radar frequencies where X-band stealth is most effective?

Shaping is a critical aspect of stealth design, since the facets and aligned edges in stealth designs bounce hostile radar returns away from the radar producing them. A stealth design shaped to beat X-band radars will lose effectiveness in the lower S-band, and become even less effective in the L-band, performance becoming progressively worse as the operating band of the radar is moved away from the design target X-band.

If a fighter, which produces a tennis ball sized radar return in the X-band, produces a basketball or beachball sized radar return in a lower band, a sensor operating in that lower band nullifies the stealth capability. The fighter built with “narrowband” X-band stealth is no longer  difficult to detect and must fight it out using its aerodynamic capabilities alone.

If a sensor can bypass the stealth of the F-22A Raptor, this fighter still has sufficient aerodynamic performance to compete effectively in both Beyond Visual Range and close combat. The same is not true for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, since it is an overweight and underpowered design, incapable of competing aerodynamically against the newer Flanker variants, and completely outclassed by the latest supercruising Su-35S Flankers.

When you consider the realities of the F-35 in Canadian service, it's a grim picture.   The aircraft, if it is built at all, wouldn't enter Canadian service until about 2015.   Then we'd expect to rely on it for another 20-years, taking it up to 2035.  Meanwhile its potential adversaries will continue to field ever more sophisticated, more capable aircraft with much more effective radars and sensors.   For pilots having to take the F-35 into contested airspace under those conditions, life would be quite similar to those who flew Whitley and Hampdon bombers into the jaws of Messerschmidts in the opening days of WWII - exciting but brief.

Sometimes you can't wait until they're in combat to "support the troops."

Afghanistan - I Know, Let's Start All Over

Billions of dollars of Western aid to Afghanistan winds up in the hands of the Taliban, at least according to Australian counter-insurgency expert David Matthews.  He heads the counter-insurgency group at his country's Defence Science & Technology Organization.

Matthews argues that Western forces have blundered in their focus on reconstruction:

Nine years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the coalition had fallen into the trap of trying to impose a framework of centralised governance on a country which had no real history of strong central government, Dr Matthews said.

He pointed out that some of the most peaceful provinces were also the poorest.

''There was a belief that if you come in and build roads, schools or paint a governor's compound, all of a sudden everyone's going to be happy. In my personal view, it's spectacularly failed in Afghanistan,'' Dr Matthews said.
'
''Inadequate infrastructure is rarely a driver of poverty … Building a road or providing education is not necessarily going to generate goodwill.''

Well, shit, there goes Plan B.  We can't crush them with bombs and we can't put them out of business with schools and roads either.

''Insecurity is a massive driver of conflict and if we can create security, it often goes a long way. A lot of people are not dyed-in-the-wool, ideological insurgents. The local guys are making guesses based on risks and rewards.''

More Afghans were turning to Taliban judges for legal rulings on inheritance and debt.

'Even if there are justice mechanisms there at a local level, justice is available to the highest bidder in the main. This is at the top of the list everywhere we go.

''The Taliban are out-governing us in the justice sector, and that is a massive problem.''

Matthews said the best thing Western forces can do is to understand and tackle the causes of local conflict, such as tribalism.  Wait a minute, ten years down the road and now we're supposed to tackle tribalism?   The window of opportunity to suppress tribalism and warlordism slammed shut back in 2003, maybe 2004 at the latest.  If we were to try that now we'd be fighting the whole damned country not just the Taliban of the south.  I think there's a word for this in High German - oh yeah, we're "Gerfukt"

If You Can't Win an Election Defending Canada Pension, You've Got No Business Being in Ottawa

Will the Liberals defend the Canada Pension Plan against the privatization ploys of Jim Flaherty?

During the summer Harper's favourite smurf agreed that a small increase in CPP premiums would be the best way to help Canadians save more for retirement.  Now, rather than enhancing the CPP, Harper & Co. want to go for a private investment plan, the Pooled Registered Pension Plan administered by the financial industry.

Doesn't this sound like Bush when he unsuccessfully pressed to privatize Social Security?   The PRPP has plenty of differences but it too invites the for-profit and often predatory financial industry into the Canadian public's retirement funds.

If you can't frame that issue in a way that resonates with Canadian voters, you should pack your bags and get the hell out of Ottawa.   And, yes Iggy I mean you.