The Wisdom of the Great - George Bernard Shaw

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.


A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.


A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.


She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech. 


Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
 
Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.


Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. 


Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.


Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else. 


Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.


A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.


I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.


I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
 
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.


It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.


All great truths begin as blasphemies.


Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous. 


If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.


The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
  
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.


The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. 


We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.


An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.


Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
 
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.


When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
 
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.


I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.


He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.


He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.


I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence. 


No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.


Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.


Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.


The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.


There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.


Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.


Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!


 

The Monster is Dead. Clifford Olson Is No More.

Cancer has finally erased Clifford Olson from the ranks of mankind.   The serial child killer died this afternoon in a Quebec hospital.

News From the Begging Bowl

Just got the word from Ralph Goodale.   The LPC Deputy Leader suggests if the party can just get another $50-grand by midnight, they'll be able to send an even stronger message to the Cons and NDP that the Libs "won't be pushed around ever again."  I found the italics in Ralph's e-mail interesting.

What I don't get is how $50,000 means the Libs won't get pushed around "ever again."   Is money going to fix the Liberals' maladies?   Is that what sunk them in the last election and the one before that - money?

Sorry, Ralph, but I'm anything but convinced that money - or lack thereof - is your party's problem.  What the Liberal Party needs is vision.   It needs policies and a leader who can connect with them to the Canadian people.   And, no, I don't mean funding for the arts and daycare.   Let's talk about what actually matters to Canadians today and to those who will follow.   Let's talk about income inequality and a determination to strengthen our society by sharply closing the chasming gap between rich and poor.  Let's talk about the environment and what is needed to deal with climate change and do Canada's bit to ameliorate global warming.   Let's talk about what we need to do to chart Canada's course so it works in ways that really matter to the guy on the street - the one who sees no reason to go to the polls.

Ralph, if you want money it's time you earned it.   Get back to me when you're ready to do that.

Supreme Court of Canada Backs Insite

Vancouver's safe injection site has been saved from Harper's attempts to shut it down.   The Supreme Court of Canada has held that not allowing the clinic to operate would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Court stopped short of ruling the government must approve other applications for safe injection clinics, holding that where there is no evidence that a supervised injection site would have a negative impact on public safety, the minister "should generally grant an exemption."

Defective Government on Both Sides of the Atlantic

All too often these days we're visited with the consequences of defective government.   By defective government I mean the weak leadership incapable of taking the hard decisions necessary to benefit the country and future generations.  Defective government ignores inconveniences it can effectively kick down the road for some future government to tackle.

When Harper Envirostooge Peter Kent boasts of his government's "commitment" to reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2025 but has taken not one meaningful step to implement that, it's a case of willfully defective government.

The Brits are dealing with their own example of defective government, the collapse of cod stocks in the Irish Sea and the west coast of Scotland.    The causet is supposedly overfishing but the real culprit is a succession of political leaders unwilling to reduce catch quotas to sustainable levels.  That's defective government.   Dr. Paul Connolly, a fishing scientists who advises the European commission on fish quotas, didn't hesitate to lay the blame at political feet:

"Continuous over-fishing has led to a collapse in cod in both these areas. The signs have been there for years and scientists have repeatedly warned quotas must be cut but fisheries ministers have time and time again ignored us. We do not know now whether the stocks will recover."

Hmm, politicians ignoring warnings of scientists.   Sound familiar?   It should because it's the telltale of defective government of the very sort that besets us today in Canada.   Government that announces commitments it has no intention of honouring.   Government that makes policy that flies in the face of science.   Government for which we will all pay dearly in the decades ahead.

Tar Sands on Trial

Should ecocide join the ranks of crimes against humanity?   The Brits are debating that at the moment.

should the bosses of polluting companies and the leaders of environmentally-unfriendly states join those responsible for mass murder in the dock. They could if a fifth crime against peace - ecocide - joined that list of human evils? The United Nations is now considering the proposal and the first test of how a prosecution for ecocide would work takes place on Friday, with fossil fuel bosses in the dock at the UK supreme court in London. It is a mock trial of course, but with real top-flight lawyers and judges and a jury made up of members of the public. The corporate CEOs will be played by actors briefed by their legal teams.

The crime of ecocide is the brainchild of British lawyer Polly Higgins, who in her UN submission defined it as:

Ecocide: The extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.

Crimes being considered for prosecution in Friday's trial include the extraction of oil from Canada's tar sands, a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fracking for shale gas in Nigeria and bauxite mining  of Niyamgiri mountain, India. The real world parallels are not accidental. 


I doubt the world is ready for this sort of thing just yet but public attitudes are bound to change as the forecast impacts of climate change set in and the full misery and costs of fossil fuel depredations set in.  Many millions are expected to die from climate change, either directly or from wars sparked by it.  Surely those who so relentlessly drove it should be accountable for the suffering and loss they occasioned.

Radical Religious Conservatism Has Little Place for the Real World

I keep trying to believe the radical religious right isn't a threat but that isn't working.

A study just released by Baylor University goes a long way to explaining the twisted thinking of our exalted Ruler, Steve Harper.  It suggests that fundamentalists believe that Adam Smith's "hidden hand of the marketplace" is actually God's hand.   In other words, God has control of the economy, we don't need to worry about it.   Here are a few gems from the survey:

"In today's United States with high levels of unemployment ande vastly expanding wealth inequality, belief in God's plan sustains belief in the fairness of our economic system and our ability to eschew government assistance to stem the tide of our economic woes."

"Although strong belief in God's plan supports the American Dream, it also supports the contrary belief that personal economicd status is predetermined.   For these respondents, perhaps the idea is that the American Dream is possible for those who work hard and have ability, but only some people are meant to possess those qualities."

"Even though Americans who believe strongly in God's plan earn less and have less education, they are most likely to believe that the United States' economic system is fair without government intervention.  Specifically, Americans who believe strongly in God's plan are much more likely to believe:

-The government is intrusive
-Healthy people don't deserve unemployment benefits
-Anything is possible through hard work
-Success = Ability"

The Baylor study is full of twisted gems like that.

About one in five Americans combine a view of God as actively engaged in daily workings of the world with an economic conservative view that opposes government regulation and champions the free market as a matter of faith.   This is how Professor Froese explained it to USA Today.

"They say the invisible hand of the free market is really God at work," says sociologist Paul Froese, co-author of the Baylor Religion Survey, released today by Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

"They think the economy works because God wants it to work. It's a new religious economic idealism," with politicians "invoking God while chanting 'less government,'" he says.

"When Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann say 'God blesses us, God watches us, God helps us,' religious conservatives get the shorthand. They see 'government' as a profane object — a word that is used to signal working against God's plan for the United States. To argue against this is to argue with their religion."

Most (81%) political conservatives say there is one "ultimate truth in the world, and new economic information of cost-benefit analysis is not going to change their mind about how the economy should work," Froese says.

Does that sound familiar?   We don't need science or statistics to tackle issues such as global warming or crime and punishment.   That sciency stuff isn't going to change our minds when we have the Ultimate Truth on our side.

Climate Change - Harper Has It Covered. Okay, You Can Cry Now

Don't worry, be happy.   The Harper government knows all about climate change and it's got that one covered according to Steve's Envirostooge Peter Kent.

Kent was reacting to a government report warning that climate change could cost Canadians 43-billion loonies a year by 2050 if our exalted Ruler doesn't pull his fundamentalist thumb out of his pudgy ass.  Oh no, says Kent, pointing out that the government is committed, as in "in principle", to reducing Canada's greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by, oh say, maybe 2025 or somewhere thereabouts.  Oh, don't worry, it's going to do something, sort of.   Why it's even forking out $29-million a year right now to help Canadians adapt to climate change.

And besides, look at it as a stimulus package, a permanent stimulus package.   The government will be covering at least some of that $43-billion a year, each and every year.   Isn't that stimulus spending?   But are the Tories serious?  In case you have to ask, these two lines in the Montreal Gazette speak for themselves.

Kent has not yet introduced a plan to meet Ottawa's greenhouse gas emissions targets, let alone stop the growth of pollution.

Harper has said the government's focus remains on the economy and job creation.

 

Don't Be Calling Me for Money

As a former Liberal I'm finding the "ex" part is being overlooked these days.   Whenever the Libs pass the begging bowl I can expect to get an e-mail about it.

What I don't understand is exactly what the Libs have done that would warrant me, a very 'former' party member, handing over my cash to them?   What have they done to reach out to me?   What have they done to reconnect with me and, for that matter, the Canadian public?   How have they reformed the party I've already rejected?   What have they done to purge the Conservative-Lite mantle bestowed on them by Ignatieff?   What have they done to restore genuine progressivism in the LPC?

What have they done?  Bugger all.   And, by my calculation, that's precisely how much of my money they deserve - bugger all.

I'm Okay With It, the Rio Grande Norte

The Americans are talking about fencing off part of the Canada-US border.   Their term is "selective fencing."  The US Customs & Border Protection Agency is canvassing local governments from Maine to Washington state for their input.

The fencing wouldn't run the whole length of our shared border.   Are you kidding?  The Yanks are broke!   And appropriate cut outs would be made for pipelines and such.

I'm okay with the idea but with just a few changes.   First, fence the whole damned 6,400 kms. of our shared border.   Second, plenty of barbed wire - on their side too.   Third, a whole lot of remote surveillance monitoring the American side.

As Gwynne Dyer points out in his book Climate Wars, when it comes to climate change, each nation's greatest threat is the neighbouring country lying immediately between it and the equator.   For Canada that means the United States.   The Gringos have to worry about Central and South American migrants, we're going to have to worry about Gringos.   The US is already being viciously whipsawed by severe storm events manifested in hurricanes, tornadoes, widespread flooding and regional, sustained droughts and wildfires.  Sea level rise and coastal groundwater salination are just beginning to set in.

The Americans, in better times, chose to populate marginally habitable regions, planting large cities in the middle of deserts for example.   Within another generation the US may well have to face the prospect of internally displaced climate migrants that will need to be relocated in more habitable regions, that is to say the north.   Coming at a time when all strata of its institutions are debt-plagued and its population weakened and severely divided, Canadians should be grateful for any  reinforcement of our own border security.   And make sure it works too.   None of this stuff.

So I'm down with it.   Let's treat the 49th parallel as the Rio Grande Norte and secure the hell out of it.  That would give Americans peace of mind and me too.

This Seems to Surprise Americans - In Canada, Blacks are as Healthy as Whites

In Canada, white people are no healthier than our black people.   When I read that my reaction was, "well, duh."  Why would a Canadian achieve different health outcomes based on race?   Well apparently what we might take as a given is news elsewhere.

From health surveys, researchers found that blacks born in Canada had lower rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and cancer than their white compatriots.

By contrast, high blood pressure and diabetes were more common among blacks than whites in the U.S.

One possible explanation is that African Americans have a long history as second-class citizens, said Thomas A. LaVeist, who directs the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions in Baltimore.

"That is what I think is fueling the disparity we see in the U.S.," LaVeist, whose findings appear in the Archives of Internal Medicine, told Reuters Health.

Healthcare in America - a Tale of Feast or Famine

We're all familiar with the accounts of America's healthcare "have nots," the tens of millions who get by with no health insurance and the hundreds of millions who are vulnerable to partial health insurance or capricious insurance companies.   But what about the "haves," the lucky people with the gold-plated health insurance coverage?   A study of primary care physicians finds the "haves" are undermining American healthcare.   They're simply getting too much healthcare for their own or anyone else's good.

In a new poll of primary care physicians, nearly half of them said their patients received too much medical care and more than a quarter said they were practicing more aggressively than they'd like to.

That could mean ordering more tests, prescribing more drugs or diagnosing people with diseases, although they would never have experienced any symptoms.

"Physicians at the frontline of medical care are telling us that their patients are getting too much care," said Dr. Brenda Sirovich of the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont, who worked on the survey. "And we don't think we are just talking about the 627 physicians that we surveyed."

"We spend a lot on healthcare in this country, more than anywhere else," Sirovich, also at the Dartmouth Medical School, told Reuters Health. "We realize that this is unsustainable."

...So why would doctors order tests that they themselves believe are excessive?

Three reasons stood out in the survey, which is based on a random sample of U.S. doctors: fear of malpractice lawsuits, performance measures and too little time to just listen to patients.

Four in 10 also believed that other primary care physicians would order fewer tests if those tests didn't provide extra income. (Of course, just three percent thought that financial considerations influenced their own practice style.)

"I'm not saying that physicians do tests in order to make money -- there is a potential to be a real cynic here -- but I think that the reimbursement model for most healthcare encourages utilization in a variety of ways," Sirovich said.

Before You Slam Shut Your Mind on Nuclear Power, Read This

It's a reflection of how little most of us know about nuclear power generation that we fell apoplectic at the Fukushima reactor disaster.   The tragedy of Fukushima is if we allow an accident caused by a tsunami at an aged, "first generation" reactor plant to seal the fate of the latest, fourth generation nuclear technology which, alone, may hold the key to the future of our civilization.

I strongly urge you to read Dr. Steve Kirsch's open letter to Obama's energy and climate change assistant director, Heather Zichal.   Kirsch is writing, not as an investor or developer or someone looking for handouts, but as one person who has come to understand the enormous benefits that fourth generation nuclear power offers us at the very moment when we need them more than ever.

He points out that today's IFR "fast reactor" technology can safely and reliably help in averting runaway global warming, safely dispose of existing nuclear waste, generate base-load carbon-free power at very low cost, avoid creating any additional long-lived nuclear waste, stimulate economic growth and create jobs and at the same time save billions in government spending.
 
Read the letter.   IFR, today, may be just the breakthrough we need right when we most need it.

Is It Anarchy When Our Elected Leaders Do It?

I've always understood "anarchy" by its dictionary definition as a state of political or social disorder resulting from absence of government control.  My layman's grasp of the concept was of some wresting of government control by a gang of, well, anarchists.   But what if that loss of control is generated from the top down, not the bottom up?   What if the loss of control is occasioned by those in whom control is democratically vested?   What do we call it if they're too indifferent or cowardly or self-interested to exercise the control we have entrusted to them?   Is that a form of reverse anarchy?

It's a fair question to be asked on this, the 2011 Earth Overshoot Day.   How our world fell into overshoot can't be laid at the feet of our elected leadership but they are directly responsible for our failure to address this challenging dilemma.   Global warming is not, of itself, their responsibility but they are directly responsible for our failure to acknowledge and respond to it.   They share some responsibility for the unhealthy growth in income inequality that is beginning to plague our societies and our economies but they alone are responsible for failing to address the problem because they alone hold the levers of power needed for that job.  They deserve a very big share of the responsibility for the degeneration of Western economies into the Casino Capitalism inherent in FIRE (Finance,Insurance,Real Estate) economies and almost total responsibility for failing to intervene to rectify this societal contagion.

The point is that on one score after another after another upon yet many others, our political leadership is failing to act and, in the result, abandoning us to an anarchy of their own making.   They beseech us for the reins of power, the very instruments essential to deal with these challenges and threats, and then simply drop them to their feet.

We can't expect anything better from our current Ruler, an unproven bean counter and professional political place holder, the very sort of institutional hanger-on his party supposedly detests yet routinely flocks to.   No, we can't expect much from someone handicapped with Steve's ideological myopia.  His is a perverted, narrow path that can only be followed by actively rejecting science and spurning fact.

It would be nice to conclude this with an assurance that some time, eventually, we'll find the sort of leadership that will meet challenges head on, individuals who will use the reins of power for the purpose they're given.  But we can't wait until 'eventually' rolls around.   We simply don't have the luxury of whiling away the dwindling opportunities that remain to us to act. 

Why do we keep electing a latter day version of the Easter Island municipal council?

It's Here! Earth Overshoot Day has Arrived.

Nothing to celebrate, actually.   Today is estimated to be the day on which mankind has consumed the entire stocks of renewable resources our planet will generate this year.   Today is Earth Overshoot Day.

As the graph shows, we're en route to gobbling up 35 per cent more renewables than get renewed this year.   How do we manage that?  Easy.   Some aspects of it, things such as spreading deforestation and desertification, are visible to the naked eye from the International Space Station.   Other aspects are discernible in other ways.   For example, the collapse in global fisheries which has fishing fleets maintaining production only by continuously "fishing down the food chain," going after the next most desirable fish as the more desirable species are fished to commercial extinction.  Perhaps most disturbing is the emptying of our ancient aquifers, drawing many times their natural replenishment or recharge rate in order to feed our demands for agricultural irrigation and our slightly insane desire to build megacities in the middle of deserts.

The best image I can come up with for our predicament is that of a guy who has just run headfirst into a wall.  The guy shakes off the impact, backs up and runs headlong into the wall again - and again, and again, and again.   He just keeps doing it until he kills himself.

Overshoot is such an existential problem that it never so much as crosses the lips of any of our political leaders - any of them.   Overshoot is one of those things they don't dare talk about because, like many other problems, it reveals that our society is based on models - economic, industrial, social, political - that have outlived their utility and turned dysfunctional.   Overshoot is us turning on ourselves and nothing less.

How Far Will Obama Grovel?

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be weighing "punitive" measures against the Palestinian Authority for having the temerity to seek statehood from the United Nations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is evaluating Israel's next step. But key members of his right-wing coalition are pushing for a firm response, which they say would discourage Palestinians from pursuing their strategy of gaining United Nations recognition or taking other unilateral steps away from the negotiating table.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned Palestinians of grave consequences and, according to one Israeli newspaper report, threatened to quit the government unless punitive actions are taken. He later denied saying that he would quit over the issue.

Lieberman and others say the Palestinian application for U.N. membership violates the 1993 Oslo peace accords, which committed both sides to work out their differences at the negotiating table. As a result, they say Israel should annex all or part of the West Bank, terminate the Oslo accords or cut off tax transfers that Israeli ports collect on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. That revenue, about $100 million a month, accounts for much of the authority's budget.

Is Obama Buying Netanyahu Time to Finish Annexing the West Bank?

"Not now" is Barack Obama's answer to the Palestinian Authority's appeal for statehood.  It's hardly unexpected coming from a feeble executive who can't even get basic legislation passed through his own unruly Congress.  The Republican's will piss on Obama later for gutting American hegemony in the Middle East yet, on Palestine, he's as reliable to Netanyahu as would be Rick Perry.

All Obama has left is an hollow "no."  He's an empty suit when it comes to the Palestinians, Jerusalem and the West Bank.  So, where does that leave the Palestinians?  al Jazeera provides a telling glimpse into flourishing West Bank Zionism, the sort of people who consider West Bank Palestinians "occupiers."  Now they're even recruiting gunmen from France.

Two weeks ago, an announcement appeared on a French website, calling for "militants with military experience" to participate in a solidarity trip to Israel between September 19 and 25. "The aim of this expedition is to lend a hand to our brothers facing aggression from the Palestinian occupiers, and to enhance the security of Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria," it explained. The dates of the trip coincide with the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.

The website belongs to the French chapter of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a far-right Jewish group founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the United States in 1968. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has refered to the JDL as a "violent extremist organisation".

"In France, it is a movement made up of French citizens who defend the Jewish community when faced with aggression, and also defends Israel in a more general manner," said Amnon Cohen, a spokesperson for the group. “In terms of ideology, we are Zionists, pro-Israeli, and we share similar ideologies to that of the Ichud Leumi ["National Union"] party in Israel." The National Union advocates the settlement of Jewish people in the entirety of the occupied West Bank, which it calls by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

I suppose it's to be expected.  Israel was born out of terrorism of the Irgun and other Zionist groups.  Terrorism drove Palestinians from their homes for the expansion of Israel.   Now, with Obama safely painted into a corner, what's next should be pretty clear.

I Don't Get Worked Up About Movies - But This!!!

John le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Smiley played by Gary Oldman.  Does it get any better than this?

A Marriage Made in Hell

Pakistan and the United States, bride and groom, betrothed in a supposed war on terrorism.   But there never was any love, no trust, hardly any common ground.   It was never more than a transactional relationship.   Was it any wonder that Pakistan opened its boudoir door to another suitor, China?

Even as it delivered cash by the billion to Islamabad, America groused about its bride's infidelities and duplicity.  A marriage made in Hell.

America has proven itself astonishingly clumsy at the "Great Game." It seemed to believe it could buy local allies like Karzai or the Pakistani military but the return on its billions has been decidedly paltry.  America expects a manner of obedient gratitude that is not forthcoming.   America's generosity has been squandered on empty promises and thinly veiled duplicity.

Recently the Chairman of America's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told Congress that Pakistan's shadowy intelligence agency, the ISI, actively supports the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network that was behind last week's attack on the US embassy in Kabul.   Mullen claimed the Haqqani group, "acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency."

Needless to say, Mullen's claims were roundly denounced in Pakistan where leaders threatened to sever Pakistan's supposed assistance with America's "war on terror."   Like it or not, America needs Pakistan's cooperation if it is to have any hope of stabilizing Afghanistan without which the Caspian Basin oil and gas reserves will likely fall under Russian control.  Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't think this was about oil?

But if America has fractured its relations with the government in Islamabad and Pakistan's generals, there's always the opposition, right?  Wrong.   In Pakistan the opposition is more anti-American than the government.  One prominent opposition voice, Imran Khan, sums it up this way, "America is killing Pakistan.  We're using our army to kill our own people with their money."

"According to the government economic survey in Pakistan, $70bn has been lost to the economy because of this war. Total aid has been barely $20bn. Aid has gone to the ruling elite, while the people have lost $70bn. We have lost 35,000 lives and as many maimed – and then to be said to be complicit. The shame of it!"'

With American credibility in the Muslim world already reeling from the Palestinian debacle, with Israel isolated, with a new Turkish-Egyptian power base being forged, with Iraq falling into Iran's sphere of influence, with Afghanistan turning into an increasingly bloody and fruitless mess and with Pakistan virtually ensuring America's failure next door, with Chinese influence flowing into America's power vacuum. with America fumbling on Syria and Bahrain, the most relevant question may be when will America find the costs and consequences of maintaining its strategic presence in the Middle East/South Asian regions unbearable?

A New Middle East Reality

Oh my, my.  Mahmoud Abbas has called Barack Obama's bluff and applied to the United Nations for Palestinian statehood.   It will fall to the United States to veto the motion, spilling international political capital the US no longer has in much abundance.   With that, America loses its last shred of credibility in the Muslim world, especially with Israel's neighbours.   Obama has but two choices - either he wrestles a triumphant Benjamin Netanyahu to a genuine settlement or he posits America as Israel's discredited stooge, paving the way for a geopolitical realignment in the Middle East.   China stands ready and willing to supplant US hegemony in the Middle East, further cementing its ascendancy globally.

Middle East expert Robert Fisk, says there's no going back:

"The Palestinians won't get a state this week. But they will prove – if they get enough votes in the General Assembly and if Mahmoud Abbas does not succumb to his characteristic grovelling in the face of US-Israeli power – that they are worthy of statehood. And they will establish for the Arabs what Israel likes to call – when it is enlarging its colonies on stolen land – "facts on the ground": never again can the United States and Israel snap their fingers and expect the Arabs to click their heels. The US has lost its purchase on the Middle East. It's over: the "peace process", the "road map", the "Oslo agreement"; the whole fandango is history.

"Personally, I think "Palestine" is a fantasy state, impossible to create now that the Israelis have stolen so much of the Arabs' land for their colonial projects. Go take a look at the West Bank, if you don't believe me. Israel's massive Jewish colonies, its pernicious building restrictions on Palestinian homes of more than one storey and its closure even of sewage systems as punishment, the "cordons sanitaires" beside the Jordanian frontier, the Israeli-only settlers' roads have turned the map of the West Bank into the smashed windscreen of a crashed car. Sometimes, I suspect that the only thing that prevents the existence of "Greater Israel" is the obstinacy of those pesky Palestinians.

"But we are now talking of much greater matters. This vote at the UN – General Assembly or Security Council, in one sense it hardly matters – is going to divide the West – Americans from Europeans and scores of other nations – and it is going to divide the Arabs from the Americans. It is going to crack open the divisions in the European Union; between eastern and western Europeans, between Germany and France (the former supporting Israel for all the usual historical reasons, the latter sickened by the suffering of the Palestinians) and, of course, between Israel and the EU.

"A great anger has been created in the world by decades of Israeli power and military brutality and colonisation; millions of Europeans, while conscious of their own historical responsibility for the Jewish Holocaust and well aware of the violence of Muslim nations, are no longer cowed in their criticism for fear of being abused as anti-Semites. There is racism in the West – and always will be, I fear – against Muslims and Africans, as well as Jews. But what are the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, in which no Arab Muslim Palestinian can live, but an expression of racism?

"...So goodbye to  [Israel's] only regional allies, Turkey and Egypt, in the space of scarcely 12 months. Israel's cabinet is composed both of intelligent, potentially balanced people such as Ehud Barak, and fools such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Ahmadinejad of Israeli politics. Sarcasm aside, Israelis deserve better than this."

If Obama runs true to form, he'll do what previous American administrations have done when confounded by Israeli intransigence - he'll put the matter on the shelf and wait.   Only this time Washington's waiting game may be hexed.  A collapse of American hegemony over the Middle East could be a milestone in America's global decline and a Great Leap Forward for Beijing.

Update:  For another take on how Obama's bungling is playing straight into the hands of China, follow this link to Asia Times.   Meanwhile, al Jazeera, is calling it "The Humiliation of Barack Obama. 
As he prepares to singularly veto Palestine's statehood bid, he must be thinking to himself: 'This isn't right'."