The Only Thing You Can Count On From Here on In Is - Nothing, Really.

Those who keep an eye on the dazzling breadth and pace of the onset of climate change impacts know that 1) there's nothing linear in this process, and, 2) we're constantly caught unawares, taken by surprise.  Based on what has transpired over the last 20 years, it's a safe bet that if someone gives you a "worst case" scenario for the next 10 or 20 years they'll probably be proven wrong and, in most cases, that won't be a good thing,

So, what's up this week? The big news is what is being called the "Atlantification" of the Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic Ocean is warming so rapidly that it may soon transform into an upper arm of the Atlantic Ocean, researchers say. 

A study published this week in Nature Climate Change shows how the Barents Sea in Scandinavia, where Atlantic waters enter the Arctic basin, has become a warming "hot spot," with temperatures spiking 2.7 degrees F since 2000. 

The changes and accompanying loss of sea ice have caused the sea to exhibit qualities more in common with the Atlantic ocean, including most notably a sharp upward tick in salinity. "Model simulations have indicated Atlantic-type conditions in the northern Barents Sea by the end of the century, but according to our results, this is likely to happen much faster," researchers wrote. 

As reported by Earther: 

What that means for the region and the Arctic as a whole is an open question. We're already witnessing weird happenings in the Arctic every year at this point, from bizarre winter sea ice disappearances to heat waves at the North Pole to massive storms. Scientists are racing to understand these changes. What saltier, warmer seas mean for the ocean creatures that inhabit the region, the fisheries that have relied on them, and the future of ice are just a few more questions that need urgent attention.

And we think we can fix this with a smidge of carbon pricing? That's rich.

For Decades We've Been Whistling Past the Graveyard, Hoping Someone Like Trump Wouldn't Come Out of His Crypt.

Trudeau (the real one) opined that living next to America was like a mouse sleeping beside an elephant. He was right but it didn't matter, we would dutifully march in lockstep with our American overlords. With time we more deeply integrated our economy, our foreign policy, even our military adventures with America's, transforming Canada into another of America's branch plants, smug that we were the biggest and therefore bestest of the bunch.

And so we lashed our skiff of state ever more tightly to America's wobbly and dangerous ship of state, akin to an Andean mountain tribesman accepting that his fate was not in his own hands.

In the decade plus since I began this blog I've been railing at this bizarre integration, arguing that Canada loosen the lashings a bit, carve a more independent path. We did pursue other opportunities but never really liberated ourselves from the branch plant peril. Now, writes John Lorinc, it's time to pay the piper.

Trump’s bellicose rhetoric after the G7 summit offers a stark reminder that Canada, despite its culture of prudence, has pursued a risky path when it comes to trade. We’ve tethered our quality of life to the whims of one large and apparently mercurial customer. And now we may have to face the consequences. 

For generations, a combination of geography and convenience has helped foster Canada’s deep reliance on trade with the US. In the 1950s, economic nationalists began bemoaning Canada’s resource-dependent branch-plant economy. In response, Lester B. Pearson’s Liberal government negotiated a trade arrangement designed to boost Canada’s struggling automotive industry; the deal turned out to be a huge boon for Ontario in particular. But an unfortunate side effect of the Canada-US Auto Pact was that it gave Canada all the more incentive to focus its trade south of the border. In the decades that have followed, our dependence on the US has become noticeably more pronounced, particularly since the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in 1989 and its successor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, in 1994.

For ordinary Canadians, the events of the past two weeks should feel like an ice-water wake-up call. After all, those huge US export numbers are linked to nearly 2 million Canadian jobs, and such exports also ensure the profitability of countless businesses. “This is a potential fork in the road for the country,” says retired BlackBerry co-ceo Jim Balsillie, a critic of Canada’s economic-prosperity strategies. “We have to ask ourselves, Are we as autonomous as we need to be? It could be an awakening moment. 

..While the Liberals signed ceta in 2016 and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership this year, our dependency on the US is as intense as it’s ever been. According to Statistics Canada, Canada’s 2016 merchandise exports to the EU and China combined—regions with a population of 1.9 billion people—add up to just 16.4 percent of what we sell in the US.

There’s considerable irony about this somewhat self-inflicted crisis. If you own even a modest investment portfolio—some mutual funds socked away for retirement—you’ve likely heard that a diversified strategy is the safest way to go. Don’t bet the farm on one sure-fire stock! 

And yet, as a country, we’ve done exactly that with our economic future. What’s more, Canada’s reliance on exports to a single market makes us quite unique among G7 nations—though not at all in a positive way. 

Economists and policy makers use a metric called the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (hhi) to gauge the degree of concentration of a country’s exports.  ...The hhi measures international trade concentration using a complex economic formula: the higher the resulting percentage, the greater a country’s dependency on a single market (or product). The majority of developed economies—including the US and most European Union countries—scored below 10 percent in 2015, which is considered to be a healthy level. 

Canada and Mexico, however, hover in the 50 to 60 percent range. According to World Bank data for 2015, the only other country with a higher hhi than that is Mongolia. Last year, StatsCan dutifully published a fact sheet detailing the concentration of our exports, which does cite our hhi score, albeit somewhat shorn of context. While it does mention that Canada is the least diversified among G7 nations, the document conveniently neglects to show how we rank globally—hardly surprising, given that these comparisons verge on the absurd for a country that claims to be one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

Balsillie, for his part, adds that while twenty-first-century wealth is being built on the ownership of valuable intellectual property and data, Canada lacks a robust and intentional strategy for ensuring that all the world-beating innovation and discovery generated in Canadian university research labs doesn’t just get scooped up by foreign firms. Citing yet another depressing international ranking, Balsillie says that, from 2015 to 2016, Canada saw the largest percentage drop among G7 nations in patents registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization, a measure which is used to show how different countries do when it comes to exploiting their own inventions.

Trump is a predator. He can smell vulnerability, he despises "weakness" and knows how to fully exploit an opportunity. He approaches it with all the empathy of a sociopath (that's probably no coincidence).

Right now we're easy meat. Decades of visionless leadership, Liberal and Conservative, have seen to that.

A Glimpse at the Risks We Must Bear for Your Pathetic "National Unity."

Two things: the Deepwater Horizon disaster involved conventional, crude oil. They were not dealing with tar-like sludge laced with toxins, acids, heavy metals and carcinogens. Secondly, it was a fairly easy site for oil spill response crews and vessels to get at. No mad currents, no huge swells, no tides, no rocky projections and inaccessible coastlines.

For all that, it was a catastrophe. That much should have been obvious as soon as they used military-grade transport aircraft, C-130 Hercules, to spray an even more lethal chemical, Corexit, not to disperse the oil or render it harmless, but to sink it out of sight.

Oil spills, even conventional crude oil spills, are catastrophic. More than a quarter century later the Exxon Valdez oil still confounds clean up crews in Prince William Sound, Alaska. It's on the shoreline, it's in the water. It's now expected to claim one of the two resident Orca pods in that area. That's a quarter century plus.

What about the Deepwater Horizon? It is now allowing researchers to chronicle how even a conventional oil spill can savage the marine ecology - for ever.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump. 

Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Researchers took sediment samples in 2014 from shipwrecks scattered up to 150km (93 miles) from the spill site to study how microbial communities on the wrecks have changed. On two shipwrecks close to the source of the outpouring of oil – a German U-Boat and a wooden 19th-century sailing vessel – scientists saw a visible oil residue. 

“At the sites closest to the spill, biodiversity was flattened,” said Leila Hamdan, a microbial ecologist at the University of Southern Mississippi and lead author of the study. “There were fewer types of microbes. This is a cold, dark environment and anything you put down there will be longer lasting than oil on a beach in Florida.

The BP oil disaster fouled more than 1,300 miles of coastline, caking seabirds and killing sea creatures and other wildlife, leading to huge financial losses for the tourism and fishing industries. But Hamdan said the oil’s impact on microbes, each measuring just a fraction of a millimeter, could prove even more significant given their foundational role at the base of the ocean food chain.

“We rely heavily on the ocean and we could be looking at potential effects to the food supply down the road,” she said. “Deep sea microbes regulate carbon in the atmosphere and recycle nutrients. I’m concerned there will be larger consequences from this sort of event.”

The marine ecology begins at the sea bed. Ocean food chains begin with the smallest creatures on the sea bed that are eaten by the next biggest creature in a process aptly described as a "food chain" in which the top predators are usually found toward the surface.

As the smallest creatures are eaten, the contamination they have absorbed into their bodies or cells passes on to their immediate predators in a process called "bio-concentration." That contamination keeps concentrating at each successive link in the food chain, straight up to the top. It attacks everything, every species, along the way. It's a direct path from microbe to orca or the great whales.

Maybe you believe prime minister Trudeau's most outrageous and deliberate lie - that there's some magical oil spill response that will keep British Columbia's coastline and our productive marine environment safe from a bitumen spill. Where is this world class oil spill package? Given that oil spills, on average, take 50 years to clean up, "world class" is a euphemism for catastrophe. And, besides, why did his own EnviroMin, Dame Cathy herself, authorize the use of Corexit in BC waters?

Trudeau assures us that his government has "done the science" on these environmental hazards. That's a lie. His very own Environment Canada says the science hasn't been done. Canada's pre-eminent scientific body, the Royal Society of Canada, says the science hasn't been done. They both put the lie to every dodgy and maliciously false claim this prime minister makes. He's simply not to be trusted, especially by the very people his petro-greed most imperils, coastal British Columbians.

Now, of course, Trudeau has even more incentive, 4.5 billion of them (and that's just for starters), to lie and obscure, confound and confuse. He's bought himself a goddamned pipeline, the J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline, 65-years old and prone to leaking like those middle age women dancing around in those TV ads. He likes that pipeline so much he paid a sketchy outfit from Texas more than six times its actual value. There's a guy who's not looking to give any straight answers on environmental questions.

Even the former Bank of Canada governor, David Dodge, says some British Columbians protesting the pipeline will have to be killed before urging the Trudeau government to find the courage to take those lives.

"we have to be willing to enforce the law once it’s there … It’s going to take some fortitude to stand up.”

No, Dave. What will take fortitude is to take those bullets and fall down.

Justin Trudeau, his entire cabinet and all the horses they rode in on; Rachel Notley, the outgoing premier of Alberta; Jason Kenney, the incoming premier of Alberta; some stooge from Saskatchewan named Moe; that former governor of the Bank of Canada; those Kinder Morgan bandits who fleeced the Dauphin and the entire roster of the Calgary Petroleum Club, they're all - oh what's that word?

Which brings to mind an article in Vox by  Stanford psychology professor, Robert Sutton, who has now defined the term, "asshole" -

There are a lot of academic definitions, but here’s how I define it: An asshole is someone who leaves us feeling demeaned, de-energized, disrespected, and/or oppressed. In other words, someone who makes you feel like dirt. 

Christy Goldfuss, former environmental advisor to Barack Obama, now with the Center for American Progress, summed it up in a way that should resonate with the people of British Columbia, our First Nations and our provincial government:

“In the absence of a president [prime minister] who is willing to lead, it is now more important than ever that coastal governors [premier Horgan], tribal leaders, state legislatures the [B.C. legislature] and local communities take up the mantle of leadership and work together to defend and restore the health of [Canada's] oceans."

How Profoundly Stupid Are Trump Supporters?

Damned stupid, that's how stupid.

Stupid enough that they can't tell a restaurant in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada, from a restaurant with a similar name in Lexington, Virginia, God Bless the USA.

The Canadian owner of the Canadian Olde Red Hen restaurant was alarmed after her TripAdvisor page was flooded with negative reviews from Trump trolls who had obviously never been in her establishment and apparently couldn't remember what country they were in.

Their intended target was the Red Hen restaurant of Lexington, Virginia that had shown Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her party the door over Trump's immigration/separation calamity.

Lexington, Virginia - Collingwood, Ontario, how can you tell them apart. That's just an 11-hour drive and an international border crossing between them.

Trump's posse prevailed in the end.  Red Hen owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, today resigned as a director of Main Street Lexington, a business council which works to improve the city's downtown.

Wilkinson's restaurant has been the scene of protests by typical Trump supporters such as this old white guy:

A Death Sentence for Being Gay in America.

If this wasn't from The New York Times you would never believe it.

Some of the jurors who imposed the death penalty on Charles Rhines, who was convicted of murder, have said they thought the alternative — a life sentence served in a men’s prison — was something he would enjoy as a gay man. 

During deliberations, the jury had often discussed the fact that Mr. Rhines was gay and there was “a lot of disgust” about it, one juror recalled in an interview, according to the court petition. Another said that jurors knew he was gay and “thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison.” A third recounted hearing that if the jury did not sentence Mr. Rhines to death, “if he’s gay, we’d be sending him where he wants to go.”

But, fortunately, that's why the United States has a Supreme Court - to intervene in cases just like this. Nobody would sit by and see a guy put to death because he's gay, right?

The justices rejected Mr. Rhines’s plea to hear his bias claim, allowing his death sentence to stand despite disturbing evidence that it may have been the result of anti-L.G.B.T. animus. As usual, the court gave no explanation for its decision not to review the case. But its silence sent a deeply troubling message about the value placed on the lives of L.G.B.T. people.

Troubling? How about outrageous.

There's Hope for Old Stoners

If you're old enough, you may come to like your prime minister a lot more on October 17. That's when the recreational use of marihuana will become legal in Canada.

If you're old enough as in "old" enough.

Researchers in Germany have found that an active ingredient unique to cannabis produces some remarkable effects on the minds of really old mice.  After a few weeks of low dose THC, Methuselah mice, 16 to 18 months old, were mentally rejuvenated.

We implanted so-called osmotic mini-pumps—tiny pumps that we put under the skin of these mice—and they constantly released the drug that we wanted to administer. And then, after four weeks, we stopped the delivery, waited for a week, and then afterwards, there were several tests on learning and memory.

A very simple test, for example, is that mouse needs to learn how to find a hidden platform. And mice learn this typically within a few days—actually, they're quite good. 

And what we observed was quite staggering. They remembered where the platform was just as well as a young animal—and also, their working memory was absolutely indistinguishable. Then we tested the animals in many different paradigms that also test memory function, and we basically couldn't distinguish [between] the old mice and young mice. These [old mice] were between 12 and 18 months, which is very old for a mouse.

But there's a hitch. There's always a hitch. The mental improvement was only found in old mice.

Cannabis is a drug that has opposite effect on young animals as opposed to old animals. It worsens memory in young mice. It also worsens memory in young humans.

So, how does it work on geezers? It reverses your endocannabinoid decline, whatever that is.

We had previously observed that the endocannabinoid tone declines as we age, so the levels of endogenous substances decrease in older individuals. And this means they're present inside our bodies to begin with. So what the plant compound does is just mimic our endogenous compounds. What we were attempting to do is to normalize the level, or bring it back to the level of young individuals.

That Sounds Like Pretty Good Advice.

It's not every day you come across an article that beings like this:

The world is full of assholes. Wherever you live, whatever you do, odds are you’re surrounded by assholes. The question is, what to do about it?

What to do? The first step is to find someone who has done some research into, well, the sphincters among us.

Robert Sutton, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has stepped up to answer this eternal question. He’s the author of a new book, The Asshole Survival Guide, which is basically what it sounds like: a guide for surviving the assholes in your life.

Asshole survival, Sutton says, is a craft, not a science, meaning one can be good or bad at it. His book is about getting better at it.

Can you really tell an asshole when you see one?

There are a lot of academic definitions, but here’s how I define it: An asshole is someone who leaves us feeling demeaned, de-energized, disrespected, and/or oppressed. In other words, someone who makes you feel like dirt.

I would make a distinction between temporary and certified assholes, because all of us under the wrong conditions can be temporary assholes. I'm talking about somebody who is consistently this way, who consistently treats other people this way. I think it’s more complicated than simply saying an asshole is someone who doesn’t care about other people. In fact, some of them really do care — they want to make you feel hurt and upset, they take pleasure in it. 

Sutton won't call Trump an asshole, not openly, but admits he checks off all the boxes. He offers various strategies for dealing with sphincters that can vary according to whether the offender is in a position of power, a boss, or just an associate or co-worker. If you're struggling with someone of that exaggerated anatomy, you might find this article worth a read.

Back in the News - the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline.

Let's say you're trying to sell your old car, a real beater. You hope you can get some sucker to give you five grand for it. And then along comes this young guy and, before your head can stop spinning, you're $32,000 richer.

Only you're not a guy with an old car. You're a sketchy Texas company with a beat up old pipeline, some rights of way and a few other assets. The young guy is none other than the Dauphin himself, Justin Trudeau. And Justin makes you an offer for your 60+ year old pipeline that's about 637% of what the damned thing is really worth. And then you do your Happy Dance.

HuffPost reports on a study that found Kinder Morgan made a 637% return on the sale of the TransMoutain pipeline to Deep Pockets Trudeau.

Texas-based Kinder Morgan made a seven-fold return on the sale of its Trans Mountain pipeline system to Canada's federal government, according to a new report that also warns the federal budget deficit could jump by 36 per cent because of the purchase. 

The report comes from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), which is funded by a variety of philanthropic groups dedicated to climate and energy issues, including the Rockefeller Family Fund.

Morneau, of course, called it a $4.5 billion "investment for Canadians" and even said it was a "fair price."

Morneau has said that the Liberal government plans to quickly flip the pipeline to a new owner, Alberta perhaps or the private sector.  The only problem is it's going to be what's called a "distress sale." Nobody is going to pay the crazy money that Trudeau lavished on Kinder Morgan. It's highly unlikely that anyone will pay anything approaching whatever the real fair market value of TransMountain might be.

What is the fair market value of the J. Trudeau Memorial Pipeline today? What is a mega-bitumen pipeline worth when the Sword of Damocles, the Carbon Bubble, hangs over its head? When you're buying a pipeline you're paying for a 60-year asset. That's a pretty big risk when you look at the volatile state of world oil markets and the inevitable transition to alternative clean energy options. You're going to need to get your money back fast and that means you won't be paying multiple billions of dollars.

UN State of the Climate Report for 2017 Debuts Online

The United Nations has released a web version of its first annual report. It covers the state of the climate as of 2017.

While the report reveals how action and financing of mitigation and adaptation measures remains stubbornly aspirational the web site does offer a library of documents that can be searched country by country back to 1989.

But Wait, That's the Scene of the Crime !!

It's house arrest for two convicted polygamists.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has sentenced Winston Blackmore to six months of house arrest and James Oler to three months of house arrest for practising polygamy. 

Justice Sherry Anne Donegan handed down the sentence in Cranbrook Tuesday morning. 

Blackmore will be under house arrest in his Bountiful area home, with allowances to go to work and attend to medical emergencies, while Oler will be able to serve his time where he works and lives in Alberta. 

Both sentences will be followed by 12 months probation.

House arrest? Isn't that where these guys committed those crimes? Just sayin.

"None of the Above" - Starting with Trudeau

What's worse, Italy now joining other European states that have succumbed to the far right, Erdogan cementing strongman rule in Turkey or the growing concern that Trump might win the presidency again in 2020? It's probably not the rise of the far right in Germany or France or Britain, at least not yet. And we're not losing much sleep over what has spread through Poland or Hungary or the Philippines either. Did I mention Burma or India?

It's all of these things taken together that should trouble us. There's an inescapable truth to these developments - liberal democracy is under attack and, in my opinion, it's supposedly well-intentioned but myopic leaders unable or unwilling to steer their nations clear of the scrap heap that awaits democracies beset too long by neoliberalism who must bear the blame.

Neoliberalism benefits the few, not the many. It shifts not only economic but also political power into the hands of those who control commerce and finance. The populace, left on the outside looking in, lose their faith in liberal democracy for having failed them.

Only their problem isn't liberal democracy. By the time the economic and political power shift happens, liberal democracy remains in name only, a mere trapping of popular legitimacy.

Globalism, of the sort we've endured these past 30+ years, treats progressivism as obsolete, a quaint vestige of times past. Yet it is that very progressivism that binds the political caste to the public and their wellbeing in service to the public interest instead of the narrow, private interest. It is progressivism that bonds the people to their nation.  It is the glue of social cohesion so essential when hard times arrive.

Alas we have a generation of political types suckled on the idea that globalism, multi-national trade pacts, agreements among governments that really serve a silent third party, the private sector, are imbued with  some inevitability. They pursue this path, failing or refusing to see the devastating role neoliberalism has played in undermining liberal democracy in so many other nations.

This is the way of the world. We must not deviate. Perpetual, exponential growth must be pursued at all costs. Who says, Justin Trudeau? Bill Morneau? The far-from-liberal Liberal caucus? Or is it Andrew Scheer or even Jagmeet Singh?  The fact is they all say it. We are shackled to it.

When Morneau warned young Canadians to accept that their fate was one of "job churn," life in the precariat with little hope of security, he was speaking from a corporate sector perspective. He didn't say we're going to prevent this, we're going to fight this so that you can have a good chance of a secure, worthwhile future. There was none of that.

If you're a young person listening to Morneau's crap, how endeared are you to liberal democracy in the age of neoliberalism? How must it feel to be written off as the "collateral damage" of neoliberalism, taking one for the team that won't be making a place for you? Do you feel your government has your best interests at heart? How could you possibly feel good about a government that so indifferently throws your future under the bus? Unless you come from Trudeau-grade wealth and privilege, how could you not feel disaffected, alienated from your government?

Earlier this month former Bank of Canada governor, David Dodge, predicted that some Canadians protesting the TransMountain pipeline will pay for it with their lives. He followed that urging that the government hold fast, keep the courage to take those lives:

“Nevertheless, we have to be willing to enforce the law once it’s there … It’s going to take some fortitude to stand up.”

Those opposed to this dark farce know the Trudeau government is incredibly selective about the laws it will enforce and the laws it skirts shamelessly where this pipeline is involved. You're not enforcing the law if you only enforce the bits that work for you.

So, how does that make you feel about liberal democracy in the age of neoliberalism or any form of democracy in a petro-state?

Do we really imagine that we're that much better than the people of other nations? Is our democracy immune to the contagion that has spread through former liberal democracies?

That Justin Trudeau cares very little about rebuilding democracy in Canada was manifest in his quick and facile rejection of his campaign promise for electoral reform. All the excuses he gave were pap, self-serving bullshit.

Where is Trudeau's commitment to defending Canadian democracy in this era of spreading authoritarianism and illiberal democracy? He remains the loyal servant of neoliberalism and globalism, despite all the evidence of how much those two forces have done to foment disaffection, undermine democracy and clear the path for the rise of authoritarian pimps stoking xenophobia and nativism.

You'll never have the measure of this prime minister until you manage to discern the difference between platitude and principle. This prime minister goes heavy on the first and extremely light on the second. He's offered us no grand vision for steering Canada safely through the tumult that's sweeping so many other nations. Perhaps he imagines that Canada will safely tick along without more. We're suckers if we fall for that.

Will the Last Sane Man in the White House Please Turn Out the Lights When Leaving.

When Trump landed in the White House observers found consolation in the fact that the place was under the heavy had of a reliable crew, "the generals." Of these, James "Mad Dog" Mattis, Trump's defense secretary was seen as the most powerful and most able to restrain this president's mood swings and brain farts. Now Mattis may have fallen from Trump's grace. From NBC News:

In recent months, the president has cooled on Mattis, in part because he's come to believe his defense secretary looks down on him and slow-walks his policy directives, according to current and former administration officials. 

The dynamic was exacerbated with Trump's announcement in March that he had chosen John Bolton as national security adviser, a move Mattis opposed, and Mike Pompeo's confirmation as secretary of state soon after. 

The president is now more inclined to rely on his own instincts or the advice of Pompeo and Bolton, three people familiar with the matter said.

One defense official said there is no indication Trump is unhappy with Mattis, just that he is not in the inner decision-making circle anymore. The official said Mattis does not contradict the president publicly or in the media and does not draw the president's ire. 

Trump's estrangement from Mattis drew these comments from The American Conservative:

Mattis is regrettably successful at keeping U.S. forces engaged in unnecessary wars, but he has no luck when it comes to persuading the president not to make colossal foreign policy errors. The Secretary of Defense is just influential enough to stop Trump from withdrawing troops from a pointless war in Afghanistan, but not nearly influential enough to prevent U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Unfortunately, supporting the war on Yemen is one policy where Trump and Mattis seem to be fully in agreement, and so the administration continues that completely indefensible support for the Saudis and their allies. 

It is not really surprising that Mattis’ influence has diminished in recent months. Since Tillerson and McMaster left, Mattis has no natural allies inside the administration. Meanwhile, their replacements are much more aligned with the president and have done a good job flattering him. The hiring of Bolton over his objections was a sign that Mattis was losing ground. He disagrees so often with Trump that it was just a matter of time before the president stopped listening to him. It is possible that Mattis will hang on as long as he doesn’t contradict Trump publicly, but it seems likely that he will become increasingly irrelevant within the administration as time goes by.

This Is Bound to Piss Off Trump

It's one of those iconic things that has become a symbol of America - the Harley Davidson motorcycle.  Foreign rivals have tried and tried to copy it but they're still seen as cheap imitations on the "real thing." Founded in Milwaukee in 1903, Harley's are sometimes called "Milwaukee iron."

Now, faced with countervailing tariffs from the European Union, Harley is moving production and jobs to Europe, the company's second largest market. The Wall Street Journal reports that Harley-Davidson has been hammered on both fronts. At home it has been hit by higher prices for steel and aluminium due to Trump's tariffs. To add insult to injury now it's facing European tariffs on its motorcycles.

From Slate.com:

Europe is Harley-Davidson’s second largest market; riders there purchased more than 39,000 bikes last year, accounting for 16 percent of the brand’s total sales volume.

Whether or not the move leads to any job cuts, “iconic American brand moves manufacturing overseas” is almost certainly not the sort of headline the Trump administration was hoping its aggressive trade tactics would generate. It was also foreseeable: Our trade partners have a long history of responding to American protectionism by targeting politically sensitive products with tariffs of their own. While Harleys may not be a huge U.S. export, they are important in Wisconsin, which Trump carried by a hair-thin margin in 2016. As the Guardian notes, China also seems to be strategically placing tariffs on politically important exports, such as soybeans, which are produced in Trump-voting states like Iowa. 

But hey, at least steel prices are rising in the U.S. thanks to the tariffs. That has to be good for American manufacturing, right? Right? Oh.

Could the Unthinkable Happen Again? Sure.

Like most of us, Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan has lived her entire life during the era known as the "Long Peace." The term describes the past 70-years without war between major world powers. It also encompasses the nuclear age.

All good things must end, we're told. Could the Long Peace be one of them?

There's certainly a major superpower re-alignment underway. America is looking at a world in which its supremacy is being challenged economically, geo-politically and, potentially, even militarily. The world has seen these transitions before and they usually, about two-thirds of them, are accompanied by war between the rival powers and their respective allies.

After nearly 20-years of chasing its tail in the Middle East, the Pentagon wants to move on by shifting its focus from counter-insurgency to what is known as "peer on peer" warfighting. They want to prepare for another Clash of Titans - i.e. the United States and whatever allies would still be willing to jump in alongside it versus China, Russia or China and Russia and whatever allies they could get to march to the sound of the guns.

Much of today’s war is low level, fought with submachine guns, portable rockets, even machetes and hoes, but the great powers continue to prepare for advanced technological war on a massive scale. Moreover, war is making one of those technological leaps that it has made so often in the past, from bows and spears to gunpowder, or from horses and mules to the internal combustion engine. The current generation of fighter planes is probably the last that will have pilots. They will be replaced by computers with increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence. And while in the 19th and 20th centuries war moved increasingly into new dimensions, whether below the sea or into the air, it is now moving into cyberspace.

The range of weapons at the disposal of military powers is terrifying in its capacity to damage the world and its inhabitants, perhaps even to bring humanity’s long story to its end. Nuclear proliferation has never entirely been brought under control and the arsenals of nuclear powers contain bombs far more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are treaties governing the development of biological and chemical weapons, but they are only as effective as the will to enforce them. At the other extreme among weapons of mass destruction are drones and killer robots, which are cheap to make, easy to manipulate and often tiny but deadly.Yet many in the military and their civilian masters continue to think and plan as if war remains a feasible option. John Bolton, the US national security adviser, who seems to have the president’s ear for the time being, has talked about invading North Korea or Iran. Equally worrying, officials and opinion makers in the US and China talk with resignation – or perhaps anticipation – about how history shows that declining and rising powers are bound to fight each other. Once you accept that something is inevitable, you risk bringing it closer. History is not much help when it comes to predicting the future, but it can remind us of the warning signals that always come before wars – the heightened rhetoric, for example, or the inability to understand the other side. What both sides learned in the cold war, sometimes nearly too late, is that they needed to grasp how the other side was thinking and feeling and how it might read or misread signals. In 1983, the Soviet Union became convinced, wrongly, that the United States and its allies were planning a sneak nuclear attack in retaliation for the Soviet shooting down of the Korean airliner KAL 007. Luckily, the west realised this in time and called off a planned military exercise.

The past can show us how wars start, how rarely they turn out as planned and how difficult they can be to stop, much less end in ways that won’t provide fertilisation for future wars. Much has changed about war, but certain things remain constant.

Nations and the individuals who lead them fight out of greed, when they think they can wrest something – land, spoils or people – from another. Conversely, we fight to protect what we have and hold dear. Or wars can be about political ideology and religion, which can have many of the same features. Some of the most terrible wars we have seen have been fought in the name of making a perfect society. When you are creating utopia, existing lives are the price to pay for a future in which everyone is happy. Finally, wars are fought for the most basic of human emotions. Fear, for example, of what others might do. In 1914, the German high command felt the timing was good for war because by 1917, so they calculated, Germany would no longer be able to take on a rapidly strengthening Russia. Feelings about honour – maintaining it, defending it, showing it – have led to wars between countries, just as they do between gangs.

This reminds me of an article published in the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute by a mid-grade officer who worried that America might let China grow more powerful than the US "without a fight." He perceived it was the American civilian and military leadership's obligation to at least try to put Beijing in its place, with force, before it displaced the US to become the dominant power.

And that business above concerning "feelings about honour" also comes into play in the Chinese military's high command. American commanders reporting on interactions with their Chinese counterparts have warned of great hostility lingering over China's "Century of Humiliation" when their country was reduced from the largest economy in the world to a peasantry state through Western intervention, the Opium Wars, seizure of Hong Kong and Macau, etc.

In other words, you've got fear on one side - loss of prestige, dominance, having to share the world stage - and a potentially deep-seated urge to restore honour sullied on the other side. What could possibly flow from that?

Elsewhere we're seeing the unraveling of liberal democracy, credited in many circles with seven decades of peace in Europe. The far right has taken hold in Hungary, Poland and, most recently, Italy while it is on the upsurge in Germany, France, the Netherlands, even Britain. The European Union, imprudently expanded, is viewed by some as about to come apart at the seams.


Unintended Wars of Blunder

As history reminds us again and again, wars are not always made on the basis of rational calculations; often the contrary. Many commentators pointed out before 1914 that Europe risked a massive and costly stalemate if its powers went to war and that, in the end, no one would benefit. Four years later, that had been demonstrated in the tally of lives lost and resources wasted. War, as Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz said, has its own logic and once started cannot be easily stopped.

We will never agree on the causes – who, what, why – of the Great War, but we should remember that mistakes and incorrect assumptions played a key role in the final crisis in July. Austria-Hungary was determined to destroy Serbia and Germany gave its infamous blank cheque without properly thinking through the consequences. In Vienna and Berlin, they deluded themselves that Russia would not enter a war in defence of Serbia and that, if the war spread, Britain would not intervene to protect France. They could not predict, and we cannot predict today, how nations and their leaders will react in moments of extreme crisis, especially if public opinion is taken into account. If, say, American and Chinese vessels clash in the South China Sea, will those at home insist on standing strong? 

So we in the west need to beware of complacency. We are as much a prey to violent emotions, to blundering into war, as the Spartans and Athenians once were. We need to remember war, not so we can draw from it lessons about how to use it and how to win, but to understand how easily it can happen and escape control and how hard it can be to end in a way that gives some basis for a lasting peace. We really do need to think about war if we want to avoid it.

A Better Way to See the World

Maps can allow us to see more clearly the true face of everything from sea level rise to light pollution to where the world's migrants are really headed.

Doug Ford Doesn't Know How to Sell Weed? Are We Talking About the Same Guy?

Ontario premier Doug Ford seemingly can't figure out how weed should be sold in the province once recreational pot use becomes legal in October.

Oh, I see his problem. You just can't do it out of the trunk of your car any more.

Is the Darkness Descending Again?

Are Donald Trump and his authoritarian "Mini-me's" across Europe setting the stage for a return of the 1930's. The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland sees the signs that history may be resetting itself.

You don’t have to go to back to 1930s Germany to know that the first step towards catastrophe is the dehumanisation of a reviled group. It happened that way in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s, and it’s happening in today’s United States. “These aren’t people, these are animals,” the US president said last month. They want “to pour into and infest our country”, he tweeted this week. “Infest” is a word reserved for rats and insects. This is the language of those seeking to choke off human sympathy, by suggesting those suffering are not even human. 

Trump’s defenders reinforce the message. It was a jolt to see Steve Hilton, onetime shoeless guru of David Cameron’s Downing Street, now reinvented as a Fox News host, grinning away as pundit Ann Coulter called the crying infants “child actors”. Her message was repeated on Fox by Nigel Farage, who similarly urged Trump not to be swayed by the “screams coming from the liberal media” and to “stay tough”. 

Farage is a reminder that this phenomenon is not confined to the US. Referring to refugees, Italy’s new interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has called for a purification, or perhaps a cleansing, of his country, “neighbourhood by neighbourhood, street by street”. His plan is to draw up a register of Roma living in Italy. Those with Italian citizenship, “we’ll have to keep, unfortunately”, he said.

The signs are there, if only we can bear to look. Something is happening to our world. Others have noted the way the post-1945 global architecture is beginning to crumble, as Trump undermines the western alliance in favour of authoritarian tyrannies. But the postwar order is unravelling in another, more insidious way too. 

Put starkly, the norms and taboos established after the world witnessed the Holocaust are eroding before our eyes. For 70-odd years, roughly the span of a human life, they endured, keeping the lid on the darker impulses that, we had seen, lurked within all of us. It steadily became taboo to voice undiluted racism and xenophobia. Those fears, those loathings of the stranger, never went away, of course. But they were held in check, partly by the knowledge of where such hatred, unrestrained, could lead. 

Now, in the US, Italy, Hungary, Poland and elsewhere, the restraints are off. There even seems to be a macho thrill in breaking the taboo, in echoing the words and deeds of that darkest era in human history. It’s as if the boundaries that were drawn after 1945, demarcating acceptable human behaviour, were mere lines in the sand – and now the tide is coming in. 

It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens bit by bit, word by word, each step taking us lower into the pit. It’s why every one of us has to fight today’s horror. Because if we don’t, who knows what terrors lie ahead?

Nikki Haley Unleashes the Flying Monkeys

They were only supposed to say good things.

America's ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has unloaded both barrels on a report criticizing Donald Trump for worsening the plight of Americans living in poverty. 

Haley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, said she was “deeply disappointed” that the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, had “categorically misstated the progress the United States has made in addressing poverty … in [his] biased reporting”. She added that in her view that “it is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America” – which prompted puzzlement as Alston carried out his investigation at the formal invitation of the Trump administration.

[Bernie] Sanders on Thursday issued a further response to Haley’s attack on the UN rapporteur. The 2016 runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination agreed with Haley that Burundi and the Democratic Republic Congo faced far worse problems, but pointedly remarked that America’s poverty was taking place “in the richest country in the history of the world and a time when wealth and income inequality is worse than at any time since the 1920s”. 

Sanders said it was appropriate for the UN to focus on America, given that 40 million people in the US still live in poverty, more than 30 million have no health insurance, and 40% of Americans cannot afford $400 in an emergency. 

“I hope you will agree that in a nation in which the top three people own more wealth than the bottom half, we can and must do much better than that,” Sanders said. 

The sharpness of tone in Haley’s criticisms of the UN rapporteur raises questions about whether the timing of the Trump administration’s decision to quit the UN human rights council was motivated in part by irritation over Alston’s decision to put his spotlight on American inequality. 

First it was Roseanne. Now it's Tom - and Michael. Vice Goes After Trump.

We know which side Roseanne is on. Now her ex, Tom Arnold, is jumping in and he's on the other side. Arnold is now working for Vice to track down long rumoured tapes and other evidence about Donald Trump - "unplugged" if you will. And he claims to have picked up one partner already - Michael Cohen.

President Donald Trump's embattled personal attorney, Michael Cohen, retweeted a photo of himself with comedian Tom Arnold — who happens to be working on a show with Vice that features him hunting for unflattering video of Trump. 

Arnold told NBC News early Friday that Cohen ― who is under investigation by federal prosecutors ― talked to him for the show, which is expected to air later this year.

"We’ve been on the other side of the table and now we’re on the same side," said Arnold, an outspoken Trump critic. 

"It’s on! I hope he [Trump] sees the picture of me and Michael Cohen and it haunts his dreams." 

Vice announced in May that it had tapped Arnold to helm a show called "The Hunt for the Trump Tapes," and investigate whether rumored tapes from the past showing the president in a negative light actually exist. 

"The host will draw on his high-profile network of celebrity friends, entertainment executives, and crew members he's met over more than 35 years in showbiz to dig for evidence on Trump's most incriminating moments — and, being a comedian and all, he'll have a little fun along the way," Vice said in the announcement of the show. 

"He'll be backed up by a handful of experienced journalists, and — aside from trying to uncover the tapes themselves — he'll look into the companies and tycoons who have allegedly fought to keep the damning recordings a secret."

Arnold would not say whether Cohen was planning to give him any tapes he might have of conversations with Trump. 

But he added, "This dude has all the tapes — this dude has everything." 

"I say to Michael, 'Guess what? We’re taking Trump down together, and he’s so tired he’s like, 'OK,' and his wife is like, 'OK, f*** Trump,'" Arnold said, laughing.

Trudeau's Tar Sands Gamble Worsening By the Day.

Bill McKibbin has some news - good news to some, bad news to others.  Fossil energy markets are falling apart. The environmental activist (350.com) says energy stocks are suddenly weak.

Researchers at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis minced no words: “In the past several years, oil industry financial statements have revealed significant signs of strain: Profits have dropped, cash flow is down, balance sheets are deteriorating and capital spending is falling. The stock market has recognized the sector’s overall weakness, punishing oil and gas shares over the past five years even as the market as a whole has soared.”

The IEEFA report labeled the industry “weaker than it has been in decades” and laid out its basic frailties, the first of which is paradoxical. Fracking has produced a sudden surge of gas and oil into the market, lowering prices – which means many older investments (Canada’s tar sands, for instance) no longer make economic sense. Fossil fuel has been transformed into a pure commodity business, and since the margins on fracking are narrow at best, its financial performance has been woeful. The IEEFA describes investors as “shell-shocked” by poor returns.

Two other developments McKibbin notes: the rapid transition to electric power and successful efforts being made by the environmental movement to undermine fossil fuel investment.

Tesla, sure – but Volkswagen, having come clean about the dirtiness of diesel, is going to spend $84bn on electric drivetrains. China seems bent on converting its entire bus fleet to electric power. Every week seems to bring a new record-low price for clean energy: the most recent being a Nevada solar plant clocking in at 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour, even with Trump’s tariffs on Chinese panels.

...the third problem for the fossil fuel industry? According to IEEFA, that would be the climate movement – a material financial risk to oil and gas companies. “In addition to traditional lobbying and direct-action campaigns, climate activists have joined with an increasingly diverse set of allies – particularly the indigenous-rights movement – to put financial pressure on oil and gas companies through divestment campaigns, corporate accountability efforts, and targeting of banks and financial institutions. These campaigns threaten not only to undercut financing for particular projects, but also to raise financing costs for oil and gas companies across the board.”

Sorry, Rachel. Sorry, Jason and you too, Justin, sorry but you're all arriving to the party 20-years too late. It's just bad luck that when Manitou was distributing energy resources around the world he gave Canada the shit end of the stick - bitumen.