Meanwhile, Less Than an Hour Drive from the Bloodstained Halls of a Parkland High School..

What would Presidents' Day Weekend be without a three-day gunshow?  Wall to wall "black guns," assault rifles, AR-15s the weapon of choice for every school massacre. Instruments of mass carnage to fit every budget, some as low as $529. And don't be afraid to hard bargain  either. Chances are you'll walk out with a few extra, high-capacity magazines and ammo thrown in for good measure.

Jorge Fernandez, a manager working the floor at the gun show says he’s expecting a large turnout of gun enthusiasts at the event, which runs through the weekend.

"We don't want people going out to buy guns and using them to kill people," said Fernandez. "But we do need to realize that lawfully licensed gun owners have the right to defend themselves."

Want to See How Easy It Is for Russia (or Anyone) to Manipulate Ordinary People?

And Trump has denied this, denounced it as a "hoax," for so long that experts say it's already too late to take meaningful action to safeguard American democracy in this year's mid-term elections. No collusion, really?

This Australian Paper May Have the Answer to America's Gun Problem

I read the headline, "American gun obsession is based on a historical misunderstanding," and I thought to myself, okay, here we go again. Arguments along this line are not uncommon. There's nothing novel about them, or so I thought. Still, I read on.

The op-ed was penned by Claudia Hakke, a professor at Melbourne's La Trobe University.

Haake, in the standard template for these commentaries, begins with how deeply rooted in Americans' consciousness is this notion that the citizenry has a generally unfettered and absolute right to carry guns because, after all, that's how the Colonialists won their freedom from those awful Brits.  That, she points out, was nonsense.


[T]he main reason about the strong belief in and attachment to guns actually has more to do with Britain and the American Revolution. In the Virginia Constitution of 1776, future US president Thomas Jefferson wrote that “no freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms”.

Jefferson and contemporaries objected to the army and took it to be a threat to those liberties that colonists sought to defend. They regarded it as a tool of oppression. For instance, John Adams saw the Boston massacre of 1770, in which several colonists were killed by soldiers, as proof for the danger posed by a standing army and feared that a tyrannical government might disarm its citizens.

Furthermore, he and others realised that such an army would also be a costly thing to maintain. At the same time, Jefferson, Adams, and others believed in civic virtue and military prowess and for this they relied on guns in the hands of private individuals, the "yeomen" that Jefferson held in such esteem. The idea was that there would be a militia system, comprised of an "an armed people" bringing their own guns.

This was the background from which the framers of the US Constitution came. The belief in militia found expression in the Second Amendment, which, as passed by Congress, read "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Yet even though the right to bear arms as described was a collective, not an individual, one as it was closely linked to the civic need for "a well regulated Militia", it came to be regarded as an individual liberty.

According to this myth, American freedom was won by armed yeomen who stood up for their believes and their country. However, it was actually the Continental Army, not the militia, who were crucial for the military fortunes during the revolutionary war. Nonetheless, there is an enduring myth which states the exact opposite and praises the militias for securing US Independence.

It is this belief that enables the NRA even today to perpetuate the idea that popular access to arms is an important counterbalance to tyranny and thus a crucial right that needs to be preserved almost at all costs. This lasting belief has assured that even high-profile assassinations or mass shootings have had little or no impact on gun control in the US. That is unlikely to change unless the underlying beliefs can be challenged and changed.

False ideas about the past, cleverly utilised by those standing to benefit financially, will thus continue to cost lives.

Unfortunately, professor Haake didn't follow through, because it leads to a possible solution.

What if the choice to purchase a firearm constituted your application to enlist in your State's militia?  Maybe gun owners of from the ages of 18 to 60 should be required to give up one weekend a month and report to their nearest armoury for training and drill. Now, unlike the National Guard, the governor and president couldn't call them up for service overseas. They would operate solely within their own state but they would also be liable to be called up for local disaster relief - floods, tornadoes, that sort of thing. No uniforms or anything smacking of militarism. They would simply have to present themselves with a serviceable firearm. 

They could be a source of auxiliary first responders, trained in first aid, communications, traffic direction, crowd control, sandbagging and such. They would also spend time at the range to be trained in and demonstrate suitable proficiency in firearm safety.

Rights come with responsibilities and cash strapped states and municipalities could use trained volunteer first responders. Those who didn't want to participate in their State's militia could opt out by turning in their weapons on pain of fines or imprisonment for unlawful possession.

C'mon, it's win-win.

Speaking of Bill "Job Churn" Morneau, How Do You Talk Someone Out of Their Health, Wealth and Happiness. It's Easy.

A chilling report from Britain's New Economics Foundation entitled, "Framing the Economy," examines how Brits were smooth talked into accepting brutal austerity.

From The Guardian:

What do people think the economy is? How do they think it works? How do you think it works, if you think it works at all? The New Economics Foundation, in its report, Framing the Economy, conducted 40 in-depth interviews in London, Newport, Glasgow, Wolverhampton and Hull, with the aim of finding points of common understanding. Though 40 is a relatively small number, the researchers were looking for images, metaphors, certainties and black holes that came up again and again, across regions and demographics.

From these tropes, they’ve been able to plot how, from 2010, the coalition government’s austerity agenda played so well into people’s hopes and fears; how the public attachment to it was so tenacious. How, even as the policy was failing to stimulate the economy in the way that had been promised, it was still seemingly resistant to counter-argument. Even once it was plainly, across the country, having devastating impacts on people’s lived experience (disabled people having their benefits removed and dying weeks later, the victims of the universal credit experiment evicted from their homes), the notion itself – that we all had to tighten our belts, and that was the responsible thing to do – was curiously buoyant.

If anything, the more hardship it caused, the more necessary it was for many to cling to the narrative. And this was all underpinned by deeply held notions about how things “work”. The economy was seen as a container, the most frequent metaphor was a bucket: some people put in, and others took out. It was also seen as cash, almost exclusively, with other frames – productivity, investment – rarely getting a look in. By the bucket definition, the economy was finite, and economic disasters were the result of too many people taking out, and not enough people putting in.

...

Dora Meade, the lead researcher, was shocked by the “ubiquity and level of fatalism”. If you combine the feeling that the economy is something beyond a normal person’s understanding or control, with the sense that the system is rigged, “people are left feeling there is very little they can do. There’s no role for the general public, even if they believe it’s broken and unfair.”

The New Economics Foundation does, however, say that we have an opportunity to reverse this, to shatter the dogma fed to us by these neoliberals.

These are times of great danger but also of great possibility. For the first time in decades, there is a sense that the economic consensus is fracturing, that a change must and will come. A space has opened up to talk and think differently about the economy. The question is what this space will be filled by: a narrow, nationalistic story which scapegoats outsiders, or a positive vision for a just and sustainable future? It is imperative that civil society rises to the challenge.

The energy, the momentum for this has to come from us. It's pointless for us to rely on today's Liberals or Conservatives or even New Democrats. Trudeau talks shiite all the time and his dutiful followers swallow every spoonful of it. Politicians, especially in the States, masterfully manipulate the narrative to get people to vote directly against their own self-interest.

Hey, Yeah You, Holland. Cut the Crap!

This is the sort of thing you've got to expect in a massively overpopulated world. The Dutch are up to their dikes in cow shit.


There is a dirty stench emanating from the Dutch dairy sector. The industry is, by most measures, hugely successful: despite the small size of the country, it is the fifth largest exporter of dairy and has a much-touted reputation as the tiny country that feeds the world.

But there’s a catch: the nation’s 1.8 million cows are producing so much manure that there isn’t enough space to get rid of it safely.

As a result, farmers are dumping cow poo illegally, the country is breaking EU regulations on phosphates designed to prevent groundwater contamination, and the high levels of ammonia emissions are affecting air quality.

About 80% of farms in the Netherlands produce more dung than they can legally use on their farm. To get around the limits, farmers pay an estimated €550m a year to get the manure removed. A recently uncovered fraud found a number of them had been avoiding the cost altogether by transporting the manure off-farm on paper, but in reality dumping it on farm fields.

The Dutch are already allowed to spread more manure on land than the rest of the European Union, but a large expansion in the sector in recent years has seen phosphate levels repeatedly exceeded. Under pressure from the EU, the Dutch government has now been forced to pay farmers compensation to try to get them to reduce cow numbers.

There was a time, when mankind's numbers were at least a third, probably half of what they are today, that we were living in balance with our very finite ecosystem. Those days are over, even for the incredibly tidy Dutch. The Netherlands produces too much phosphate, a great destroyer of marine life in both fresh and coastal salt water. In many other countries, industrial agriculture is rapidly degrading farmland and threatening global food security. The thing is, we just can't keep going this way. 

All of our leaders are disciples of endless, exponential growth. Yet our planet's ecosystem is like a child's party balloon. There's a limit to how much air you can blow into it and, when you pass that limit, well, you know. If you don't, feel free to ask the Dutch.

If This Keeps Up, I Might Start Feeling a Bit Sorry for Donald Trump.

Former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal is spilling the beans on Cap'n Hands, Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States of America.

President Donald Trump and his allies concealed an affair with a former Playboy model through secret meetings, payoffs and legal arrangements, according to a report published Friday inThe New Yorker.

Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, documented her alleged nine-month affair with Trump in an eight-page handwritten note shared with The New Yorker.

McDougal, 46, claims Trump once offered to pay her after they had sex in a private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where many of their purported liaisons took place. She alleges Trump tried to avoid creating a record that might expose their relationship by having her pay for her own flights and then reimbursing her.

Enter the unfortunately named Mr. David Pecker.

McDougal confirmed to The New Yorker a Wall Street Journal report that said American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, agreed to pay her $150,000 for her story but then did not publish it.

David Pecker, the CEO and chairman of AMI, is a Trump supporter who has reportedly described the president as a “personal friend.” Six former AMI employees told The New Yorker that Pecker often purchases a story in order to bury it — a tabloid industry practice called “catch and kill.”

In a statement provided to NBC News, AMI appeared to dismiss the report: "The New Yorker and Ronan Farrow's suggestion that AMI engages in any practice that would allow it to hold influence over the President of the United States is laughable."

We're Slipping. Canada's Climate Change Survival Rating is Slipping

The University of Notre Dame's latest Gain Country Index ranks the world's nations on their ability to withstand the impacts of climate change.

The index keys on two factors. The first is a country's vulnerability to climate change and other global challenges. The second is the measures being taken to enhance resilience.

Those at the top are expected to be the last and, at least initially, least impacted. At the other end, the least fortunate countries are collected into groups. The very worst, "Oh my God, we're So Screwed." Then there's the "We're So Screwed" group who rank just behind the "We're Screwed" nations.

Canada? We're at an underwhelming 13th place. It's like we landed in the 13th slot despite ourselves. But there is hope. Canada is shown as trending down and our 68.9 rating isn't that much higher than the U.S. rating of 68.0. Norway topped the ratings, naturally, at 76.

Among the Mushroom Cloud Club we have Pakistan in 138th holding steady with a 38.8 score, India at 118 with a 42.2 score, and China in 59th with a 53.5 rating. In 29th, Israel does better with a 61.4.

More Mueller Indictments

NBC News reports that special counsel Robert Mueller has issued indictments against thirteen Russian citizens and three Russian entities in connection with the tampering of America's 2016 election.

The indictments — part of Mueller's ongoing investigation — are the first criminal indictments tied directly to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., charges three defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and charges five defendants with aggravated identity theft.

"From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016," the indictment states.

According to the indictment, some defendants traveled to U.S. under false pretenses to collect intelligence and to "reach significant number of Americans for purposes of interfering with the US political system, including the presidential election of 2016."

Now we wait for the other shoe to drop. That will be when indictments are issued against those "significant number of Americans" who colluded with the Russians. It's probably not going to be a pleasant weekend for Don Jr., a.k.a.
"Fredo" Trump, and Jared may be busy getting the lowdown from his dad on prison shower etiquette.

It's a shrewd move on Mueller's part. The grand jury indicts the Russians. It's announced on a Friday. A whole weekend to soak in. No one on Capitol Hill or in the White House will be rallying to their defence. Those Russian indictments then provide a solid anchor for the next tranche of indictments, the Americans with whom they colluded. If you're okay with indicting the Russians, you're going to have a hard time getting shirty when their American play pals get the same treatment.

Well played, Robert Mueller.

The Tar Sands Are a Big Loser. When Will Trudeau Wake Up to Reality?

Last week it was renowned Alberta ecologist, University of Alberta prof Dave Shindler, who along with Trudeau's own Environment Canada and the Royal Society of Canada, demolished Alberta's and Ottawa's laughable claims that their bitumen pipelines and supertanker scheme is safe. They haven't done the core research, the really important science. They haven't even started.

Now their economic case for the Tar Sands is gutted by David Hussey, a political economist at the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute.  Hussey sets out his case in an op-ed in the latest Tyee. Here's an excerpt.


While the benefits of the oil and gas industry have declined, the cost of carbon pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels has increased. The price of carbon across Canada will reach $50 per tonne in 2022, which economists consider a very conservative estimate of the social and economic costs imposed on the world by carbon pollution.

A report published last week by the Parkland Institute looked at the effect of a $50-per-tonne carbon price based on the proven oil and gas reserves of those big five oilsands producers.

Even using this low carbon price, the cost associated with these reserves being combusted ($320 billion) outweighs not only the total assets and stock value of the big five (about $250 and $190 billion, respectively), but also Alberta’s entire economy (about $310 billion).

The actual costs of burning these fossil fuels will be much greater through their contribution to global climate change. Indeed, the consequences of extracting and burning the proven reserves of the biggest oilsands producers would be catastrophic, and would be felt by people and environment through the increased frequency of extreme weather events, such as floods and wildfires, as well as negative health effects and coastal damage.

...

The benefits of the oilsands are declining, and the effects and costs of climate change are increasing. The economic opportunities from phasing out the industry — cleaning up oil wells and toxic tailings and ratcheting up our renewable energy and clean technology industries — are enormous.

What are we waiting for?

Look, I know you love him as I never shall but Trudeau is bad for our country, he's worse for our kids and worse yet for our grandchildren's future. He's recklessly indifferent to what he's doing to this country, what he's bequeathing to our grandchildren and for him, his political interests trump our grandchildren's future.

It's plain as day. With Justin Trudeau, just as with Stephen Harper before him, partisan politics comes before this country.

Schiff Lifts the Carpet, Gives the Public a Glimpse of What Lies Beneath.

The ranking minority member on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, says they've uncovered an abundance of evidence of collusion with the Russians and obstruction of justice involving Donald Trump.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Wednesday that the panel had seen an “abundance” of evidence of collusion with Russia and obstruction by Donald Trump’s campaign and administration that is not yet public.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Schiff said a lot of information was already in the public domain that pointed to extensive contacts between the Trump campaign team and the Kremlin, and later efforts by the Trump entourage to cover up those contacts. But Schiff said there was much more to come out.

He said: “There is certainly an abundance of non-public information that we’ve gathered in the investigation. And I think some of that non-public evidence is evidence on the issue of collusion and some … on the issue of obstruction.”

Committee chairman, Devin Nunes, rushed to release a report that seemed aimed at undermining the FBI and the Mueller investigation. Trump didn't hesitate to authorize its release even over the objections of the FBI and national security agencies. The Democrats, including Schiff, ridiculed the Nunes report as cherry-picked and deliberately misleading. The Dems on the committee drafted a minority report, one that Trump has predictably buried.

Adam Schiff has to be one of the most soft-spoken, understated members of Congress I can recall. He's not given to hyperbole. If he's said there's an abundance of evidence against Trump within the House intelligence committee it's a safe bet that Robert Mueller and his team of A-list investigators are sitting on something very special indeed.

It Wasn't Just a Crazed Kid with an Assault Rifle At that Parkdale High School Yesterday. He had Company, America's "Bought and Paid For" Congress Were In That School At His Side..

I watched Lawrence O'Donnell interview a father whose 15-year old daughter was at the Parkdale, Florida high school where 17 people, mainly students, were gunned down yesterday. The man's daughter had not been harmed but he was visibly upset by the event and what she had gone through as she and her classmates huddled to the sound of rapid gunfire.

O'Donnell asked the dad what he wished to say to America's senators and representatives. It was pretty blunt. "Stop taking the blood money." He wanted them to stop taking money from the gun lobby, especially the National Rifle Association.

Poll after poll have shown that the American people support gun control by a solid margin but the public will and the public interest cannot overcome the powerful combination of the gun lobby, particularly the NRA, and a "bought and paid for" Congress that wallows at the nadir of moral and ethical corruption.

Last night Jimmy Kimmel looked at a few congressmen and the NRA cash they have pocketed over the years.  Here are a few:  Richard Burr, R., senator North Carolina, $6,986,620; Roy Blunt, R., Mo., senator, first elected 2011, $4,551,146; Marco Rubio, R., Fla, $3,303,355; and my favourite, Joni "Cut their Balls Off" Ernst, R., Iowa, and just into her third year in the Senate, a whopping $3,124,273. That's a million NRA clams a year for reformer Joni. Not bad for a girl who boasts that she grew up on a farm castrating hogs. You go girl.

Now that's not to say that Rubio hasn't done well from the NRA and yesterday, as his state ran red with the blood of his dead highschool constituents, Rubio fended off demands for gun control with the now standard, "it's too soon to be having this conversation."

It was just two weeks ago that The Economist released a survey of the world's true democracies. The United States didn't make the cut.

The US was downgraded from a "full democracy" to a "flawed democracy" in the same study last year, which cited the "low esteem in which US voters hold their government, elected representatives, and political parties."

The study has five criteria: Whether elections are free and fair ("electoral process and pluralism"), governments have checks and balances ("functioning of government"), and whether citizens are included in politics ("political participation"), support their government ("political culture"), and enjoy freedom of expression ("civil liberties").

Let's put it this way. The Economist reviewers obviously bent over backwards to give the U.S. even a "flawed democracy" rating.  "Free and fair elections." Really, are you kidding? Political participation?  No, no, no. The NRA politically participates. The Koch brothers politically participate. The people? Not a chance.

Political culture, popular support for the government? Trump's numbers are in the ditch. Public support for Congress is in the toilet. Did they even look at the rise of extremist, fringe politics in America?

America is not a democracy. It was founded as a republic, not a democracy. While it developed pretty strong democratic aspirations during the 20th century, Reagan and his successors collectively put that nonsense back in the box, in part by ushering in the age of neoliberalism. America is a plutocracy and the popular vote doesn't matter, not until those voters throw out their vile, corrupted government. And, until they do, rivers of blood will continue to roll down the hallways of their kids' schools.

N.B. That pink AR above? That's a little girl's toy. However - wait for it - you can also buy the real thing, a fully functional AR-15 in hot pink. God Bless Amerika.

Once Again the NRA, the Gun Lobby and America's "Bought and Paid For" Congress Deliver Living Hell to an American School.

For the record, we're halfway into February of 2018. Today, Valentine's Day, Florida chalked up America's 18th school shooting of the year.

At least 17 dead, most of them freshman students of a highschool in Parkland, Broward county. The 19-year old gunman used the school fire alarm to draw his victims into the hallway where it was easier to gun them down.

Initial reports suggest the weapon used was America's schoolhouse slaughter weapon of choice, an AR-15. The shooter was old enough he could have walked into any sporting goods store and got one plus a rampage-load of ammo.

And Trump has the audacity to call other nations "shitholes."

The Onion responded with its now familiar massacre headline: "'No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens."

The Dauphin Speaks - With Forked Tongue

It's so typical of this government. In the wake of the controversial aquittal of a Saskatchewan farmer who shot and killed a young First Nations man on his land, Justin Trudeau has vowed a major overhaul of the criminal justice system, even a new legal framework for indigenous people.

I agree that something needs to be done but I have no confidence that school marm Trudeau is the person to make that call.

There's a time honoured legal maxim or adage that states, "hard cases make bad law."

In one of the most quoted statements in American law, legendary American Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, proclaimed that “great cases, like hard cases make bad law.” He explained that this was so because the “hydraulic pressures” of the great case tend to distort the judgments of the justices.

Laws written in the heat of a hard decision tend to be excessive, ill-conceived and ultimately ineffective. Then again, calm, dispassionate deliberation isn't exactly this prime minister's forte.

Trudeau is an emotional man. His father's motto, "Reason over Passion," wasn't passed along in the gene pool.

In a 15-minute speech in the House of Commons — an address short on concrete details — Trudeau said he wants to give new life to Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which recognizes and affirms Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Trudeau said governments have ignored these rights entirely for too long, leaving it to the courts to define them.

"Instead of outright recognizing and affirming Indigenous rights, as we promised we would, Indigenous Peoples were forced to prove, time and time again, through costly and drawn-out court challenges, that their rights existed, must be recognized and implemented," Trudeau said.

I wonder if he'd like to begin by respecting Aboriginal rights in opposition to Kinder-Morgan. Oh no, that's already been sold out from under them. A little hypocritical? No, not a little. A lot.

This Tells You a Lot About Today's Economy

Washington-based Amazon has displaced Washington-based Microsoft to become the world's third largest company (by market valuation).

Here are the current standings;

1. Apple - $849 billion

2. Google - $746 billion

3. Amazon - $ 702 billion

4. Microsoft - $699 billion

5. Facebook - $521 billion.

Boeing, which chose to leave Washington for Chicago, comes in at a paltry $205 billion.

By contrast, Canada's top 3 are banks: RBC, TD and Bank of Nova Scotia, at $113, $102 and $74 billion (Canadian) respectively. Pretty small potatoes and not an innovator or tech giant among them. Hewers of wood, drawers of water and bank tellers. Great.

The other thing worth noting is that Amazon and Microsoft are Washington state companies.  Apple, Google and Facebook are based on California. It's all west coast. All of it. The five biggest companies, not just in the U.S., in the world.

While Amazon and Microsoft combined tally $1.4 trillion USD in value, all other public companies in Washington state account for just $400 billion in value.

"What a Tangled Web We Weave... " More Stormy Weather Heading Trump's Way.

That old orange bugger just can't catch a break.

Porn queen, Stormy Daniels, says that Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen's admission that he paid her $130,000 in hush money not to talk about her fling with the now President of the United States of America breaches their agreement and she's now free to talk.

It seems that Stormy and her lawyer are open for business and waiting to entertain offers for an exclusive on her tawdry Vegas hotel room lap dance with the Cheeto Benito.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, believes that Trump attorney Michael Cohen invalidated a non-disclosure agreement after two news stories were published Tuesday: One, in which Cohen told The New York Times that he made the six-figure payment with his personal funds, and another in the Daily Beast, which reported that Cohen was shopping a book proposal that would touch on Daniels' story, said the manager, Gina Rodriguez.

"Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story," Rodriguez said.

...

[I]n a 2011 interview with the gossip magazine In Touch Weekly, the actress -- who the magazine said passed a polygraph exam -- said the two had sex and she described a subsequent yearslong relationship. The AP has previously reported that In Touch held off on publishing her account after Cohen threatened to sue the publication. It published the interview last month.

In recent weeks the actress has played coy, declining to elaborate when pressed on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

Rodriguez said her client will soon announce how and when she will tell her story publicly. The celebrity website The Blast first reported the contention that Cohen's comments freed Clifford from her non-disclosure agreement.

"What a tangled web we weave when first we learn to deceive." I'll bet Walter Scott never imagined when he penned that line that it would become so eternal.

Monbiot Warns Britons About the Trojan Horse Lurking Inside a Trade Deal With the U.S.

To Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, there's danger lurking for the UK in any free trade deal with the United States: livestock laced with antibiotics.


It looks like a proper zombie apocalypse. Bacteria we thought we had conquered are on the march again, defeating almost all attempts to slaughter them. Having broken through the outer walls, they have reached our last lines of defence. Antibiotic resistance is among the greatest threats to human health.

Infections that were once easy to quash now threaten our lives. Doctors warn that routine procedures such as caesareans, hip replacements and chemotherapy could one day become impossible due to the risk of exposing patients to deadly infection. Already, in the European Union alone, 25,000 people are dying each year because of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Yet our last defences – the rare drugs to which bacteria have not yet become immune – are being squandered with wild abandon. While most doctors seek to use them precisely and parsimoniously, some livestock farms literally slosh them around. They add them to the feed and water supplied to entire herds of cattle, pigs and poultry: not to treat illness, but to prevent it.

Or not even that. In the 1950s, farmers discovered that small quantities of antibiotics added to feed made animals grow faster. Using antibiotics as growth promoters – low doses routinely applied – is a perfect formula for generating bacterial resistance. Yet many countries continue to permit this reckless practice. The US Food and Drug Administration asks drug companies voluntarily to refrain from labelling antibiotics as growth promoters, suggesting they be rebranded for “new therapeutic indications”. Around 75% of the antibiotics used in the US are fed to farm animals. Our city is under siege, and we are knocking down our own defences.

This graphic illustrates what's happening and not just in the United States. I had to make it full size for legibility.

This chart, from Pew, shows antibiotic use in the United States for 2011.

They're Calling It "Snow Washing." Money Laundering, Canadian Style.

Is Canadian corporate law a money launderer's dream? According to The Guardian, we're right up there with Kenya.

Canada is one the world’s most opaque jurisdictions when it comes to identifying the owners of private companies and trusts, according to anti-corruption campaigners who say that more rigorous checks are required to obtain a library card than to set up a company in the country.

“Anyone can start a company in Canada. It costs about C$200 and the owner of the company can remain completely anonymous,” said lawyer Mora Johnson, who recently authored a report detailing the country’s lax rules around corporate registration. 

...

Most provinces allow nominee directors and shareholders and do not require them to disclose that they are acting on behalf of another person. “Privately-held companies can easily be abused for tax evasion, for money laundering purposes and to stash the proceeds of crime,” said Johnson.

How Canada stacks up against other countries – including known tax havens – was suggested in a 2013 study by American researchers. After sending out thousands of queries about setting up anonymous shell companies, researchers ranked Canada among the easiest of 60 countries to set up an untraceable company, along with Kenya and a few US States.

This opacity – described in a recent Transparency International report as the “getaway car of financial crime” – has become the perfect vehicle for “snow washing”: the use of Canada’s positive image to tout the country as an offshore destination where suspect transactions can be legitimised.
...

A 2016 report found that nearly half of the 100 most expensive homes in Vancouver – which ranks among the world’s least affordable housing markets – were bought using shell companies, trusts or nominees.

“Is it a wealthy person who earned that money? Or is it the Hells Angels?” Johnson asked. “An Iranian or North Korean under US sanctions? We have no idea.”

Files from Mossack Fonseca, leaked in 2016 as part of the Panama Papers revealed another consequence, said Transparency International Canada’s James Cohen. “Canada is being sold through snow washing by foreign intermediaries, who are telling their clients that you can bring your illicit finances into Canada and they’ll be cleaned like the pure white snow.”

Jurisdiction over corporations in Canada is shared. There are federal corporations and provincial companies and a variety of factors that can make one preferrable to the other.

But, never fear, our federal government's tax sleuths at the Canada Revenue Agency are all over this. Friend, Lorne, referred me to another article from The Guardian detailing how the CRA is auditing food servers in Prince Edward Island who might have been dodging tax on their tips. The Trudeau government. They're sure cleaning house. Unless your house is really big and stashing cash in the Isle of Man.

TaxFairness.Ca has more on snow washing.

China - The Newest Challenge to Canada's Arctic Sovereignty?

"Yeah, sure, you and whose army?" That was a fairly common taunt among boys when I was young. You and whose army is gonna make me. Yet it may find new life in Canada's dealings with China over the Arctic.

Late last month the People's Republic of China issued a new Arctic Policy white paper.  According to the South China Morning Post, it's giving Ottawa the willies.

One of the key findings by Chinese analysts is the role China defines for itself as “an important stakeholder” in Arctic affairs. This point found its echo in an event on February 6 at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, which brought together experts from US think tanks and former US government officials.
...

Interestingly, the key member state that seems particularly concerned about what the white paper will mean for them is Canada. Its experts say China’s Arctic policy is attempting to tread a line between respecting the sovereignty of Arctic nations like Canada and the United States and leaving room to gain from disputes under international law.

Language like “respect for international law”, used in the white paper, is viewed by scholars such as Robert Huebert from the University of Calgary and Université Laval Professor Frédéric Lasserre as an attempt to articulate limits on member states’ sovereignty.
Canada is worried that China will adopt the same legal position as the US – treating the Northwest Passage as a “strait for international use” – while Canada claims it as its “internal waters”. Huebert added that inviting Chinese investment in the Canadian Arctic could be a double-edged sword for Canada’s economic benefit and environmental protection. Both Huebert and Lasserre hold that the white paper leaves out Chinese naval activities, especially around the fringes of the Arctic, which call for particular attention.

China, while not an Arctic nation, sees great opportunities in that region. For shipping it will use the relatively ice free and open northeast passage along Russia but it does have an eye on Canada's side of the Arctic Ocean. China already operates the largest non-nuclear icebreaker in the world and is building more in a shipyard near Shanghai. We've also seen in the South China Sea how Beijing manufactures territorial claims by constructing artificial islands on shoals and reefs.

Trudeau Was Given Sophie's Choice. He Didn't Hesitate to Pick.

I never watched the movie, "Sophie's Choice." I found the premise just too creepy. A mother forced to choose which of her two children's lives will be spared and which child will be consigned to extermination. 

That, according to the Dauphin, was his predicament when it came to the Kinder-Morgan pipeline. Rachel Notley gave him a choice - Alberta or British Columbia. It was Kinder-Morgan or his laughable 'national climate change plan.'

Rachel had Justin's balls and he wasn't getting them back until she got her pipeline. What's a young dandy supposed to do 'cept cave in, crater? And so, British Columbia, whose voters had trusted Trudeau's ever so sincere election promises, was for the axe.

Am I making this up? Hell no. Justin admits it all in an interview he just gave to our National Observer.

Trudeau larded the interview with his by now standard and feeble bullshit. Canada's green future depends on flogging as much bitumen as possible to buyers in Asia. And, by ramping up production of the lowest-grade, highest carbon, toxic contaminant-laced pitch (think Le Brea Tar Pits), we are going to slash our carbon emissions. This is the same government that isn't even on target to meet Stephen Harper's pathetic emissions cuts. And does Justin really imagine Alberta's next premier, Jason Kenny, is going to keep Notley's promises?

"The process that Stephen Harper set up was flawed, which is why, through a transitional process, we added to the Kinder Morgan evaluation process the kinds of consultations — the kinds of science, that we are now demanding for all projects as of now, with the new system," he said. "... So we actually managed to apply a better process to get to the Kinder Morgan decision."

There it is, the "science" again. Where is it? His own environment ministry says it hasn't been done. The Royal Society of Canada has a lengthy list of essential research that hasn't been undertaken. Alberta's renowned ecologist, professor David Shindler, backs premier Horgan's demand that someone research this disaster-in-waiting before it's too late.

Where's your science, Justin? Did the dog eat it? The fundamental research and the time that's needed to produce the analysis needs time, a lot more time than you've had to garner it. Shindler makes it obvious that Trudeau's "science" can exist only in his mind.

Trudeau said the Trans Mountain expansion "was always a trade off" for Notley's unprecedented climate action. That certainty and support, he added, put Canada on a pathway to achieve its Paris climate change targets and is part of the economic and environmental package that makes the pipeline so important.

To Justin Trudeau it was a trade off. He traded off British Columbia and its coastal waters for a promise that Rachel Notley may not ever be able to keep and Justin Kenny sure as hell won't. To British Columbians, however, it was more than a trade off. It was as craven a sell out as this country has seen in decades.

Grease the Skids, It's Looking Stormy

It's a now familiar pattern for the Trump brigade. At first deny everything, no matter how implausible the denial, and hope that whatever it is dies a natural death.

If repetitive denial doesn't work, invent some tall tale, again no matter how implausible, and see if that won't work.

Trump has a problem. He danced the lap tango with a porn queen in Vegas a few years back when his latest wife, Melania, was home with baby Barron.  Some years ago she shopped her story to a few gossip rags. However it became an issue again while Trump was campaigning for the presidency.

Trump continued to claim it never happened but word got out that Stormy's silence was bought for a tidy payment of $130,000.

Then the penny dropped and the Trumpsters had to face the cold, hard truth that the payment could be deemed to be a campaign contribution, an undisclosed campaign contribution, the hush money being in furtherance of Trump's pursuit of the presidency.

Apparently Team Mueller has been looking into that and it seems they've got Trump dead to rights. Time for the Hail Mary pass. Wait for it.

Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, now claims he paid the hush money. He paid the $130,000 out of his own pocket.  He stopped well short, however, of claiming that Trump knew nothing about it.

It's hard to see how Cohen's new tale, even if it was true, could make any difference. He was on Trump's payroll after all. It was hardly some act of charity. Cohen, therefore, can be seen as having made an undisclosed contribution of value for the furtherance of Trump's campaign prospects. It's hard to imagine that, given the campaign disclosure law, Cohen would have placed his own client in jeopardy by concealing the payment from him.

I feel sorry for Melania, sort of, but also for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She's been working so hard lately lying for Donald Trump that her face is beginning to slide off her head and the first wisps of smoke are coming from her ears.

Pappa Pastor Mike must be thrilled to see his little girl, the mother of his grandbabies, making a living telling outrageous lies about wife beaters, perverts and trysts with porn queens.

Now, I'm thinking the GOP has the solution to this mess right there in its own ranks in Washington - Joni Ernst. Joni campaigned for her Senate seat with ads bragging about how she grew up on a farm castrating pigs. Sounds like there's a hog in the White House who could use a bit of Joni's magic. Just sayin'



UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald offers a tidy analysis of just what Michael Cohen actually said and what he didn't exactly say. Worth a read.