This Earth Hour has Seven Seals.

Last night was the much hyped night of the Earth Hour; A lot of people turned stuff off for a bit, then turned it back on. I am not alone in feeling that the whole thing is a gimmick, and in a lot of cases I'm a bit concerned about what people think they were accomplishing.

If you're so concerned about things, scrap your cars, take a bike or public transit everywhere and disable your AC in the summertime when you really could use it. Eat more food that doesn't require cooking, hell, just inconvenience yourself a whole bunch and turn back all the progress we've made in quality of life. Alternatively, put yourself deep in debt to invest in solar, geothermal or other renewable energy for your house.

It is NOT a "step in the right direction"; it's a blip, a public-relations exercise, nothing more and people who fail to recognize this (and worse, actively deny it) worry me. I wonder what other schemes they'll cook up and how many will follow along with it in spite of their better interests.

In any event, you can be sure that no Asian countries (Australia doesn't count) of significance took part in this, and if India, China and Russia alone don't do it, just like Kyoto, it's a waste of time.

Of course if people want to use less energy I'm all for that, and in my own way I do the same when I have the chance. If I could afford it, I'd set my house up to be "off the grid" if push came to shove, but it isn't economical. The choice seems to be deliberately shooting our standard of living in the foot or, well, not.

It must be remembered that higher technology allows an ever smaller environmental footprint the higher your technology gets. Hunting and gathering, slash and burn agriculture, all the hallmarks of a low (or no) technology society don't work with the kind of population the planet has presently. Turning off the lights (literally and figuratively) could bring more than an hour of darkness.

This is what happens when we leave...

The Brits quite understandably pulled out of most combat operations Basra, and by extension most of their military commitment to Iraq a while ago, and now we see what happens. This is a good example (on a smaller scale due to the more homogeneous religious make-up of Basra) of what will happen to Baghdad when the Americans finally pull out.

BAGHDAD — Shiite militias in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent in five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.

Violence Flares Across the South

Witnesses in Basra said that members of the most powerful militia in the city, the Mahdi Army, were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 30,000 Iraqi Army and police forces involved in the assault. Fighters were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.

I am no supporter of the débâcle in Iraq, and I do hope that McCain's noises about being less ready to invade places marks a more realistic American foreign policy. That said, more chaos surely follows any major pull-out of American forces from Iraq in the near future, so I imagine they'll continue to put good money (blood and treasure) after bad for a while yet. What price democracy in the (Arab) middle east? More I suspect than even the USA can afford...

Closer to home, I don't feel that things would go quite like this were Canada to pull out of Afghanistan, but Iraq and Afghanistan are apples and oranges. If NATO gave up, Afghanistan would likely be split into north and south, much as it was before we showed up, albeit the North would be able to stand on its' own (with help). Welcome to Talibanistan, free-fire zone...

We'll be in the 'Stan for some time yet, so hopefully NATO steps up and sends more troops where we need them to move things along a bit. I don't want to see any repeats of Basra in OUR sandbox...

Democracy; watch this space.

Unless there is a rapid and profound reversal in the fortunes of one of the American Democratic candidates, Hillary and Barrack are racing to see who can lose to McCain. I am not a keen observer of the American political scene, so if I’m coming to this conclusion it’s either too obvious to miss or I’m just pulling stuff out of my ass again.

I am of course not above such things here, but as always you get what you pay for, and you get fair warning of my lack of academic rigor when it comes to anonymous ranty stuff. With that out of the way, in the absence of anything that particularly outrages me today, this will be the beginning of a free-form noodling about what we have for government and what else there may be down the road, or at least options.

What I would really like to do is encourage a discussion about Democracy, and what we understand that to be. From there, what we actually have vs. our expectations, and possibly what could be done to bring the two closer together.

This is more an issue for the Americans (to the best of my knowledge I have no American readers) as the Canadian system has not strayed far, warts and all, from our founding. So if it seems I look south of the border a lot, it’s both because their system and political origins are more interesting than ours and because of the state and fate of America is of no small concern to the rest of us Democracies.

Main Entry: [from Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary]
de•moc•ra•cy
Pronunciation:
\di-ˈmä-krə-sē\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural de•moc•ra•cies
Etymology:
Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dēmokratia, from dēmos + -kratia -cracy
Date: 1576

1 a: government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2: a political unit that has a democratic government
3capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States
4: the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5: the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

There’s a pretty non-partisan definition to start from. Even more simply; a form of government that involves the direct, non-violent intervention of the people in the governing process. (Source: me)

More to follow as I come up with it, likely to show up as edits to this post, hence the subtitle.

Colour Coded

I like to stay away from racial issues, but the current flap over Obama's church brought a bit of this up, and made me think about it. This quote from the comments section in particular,

The fact that we refer to anyone with even 10% of "black" blood as "black" is masking the true meaning - it means they are "not white".

is a significant point. For years I have had an issue with people who are half or more Caucasian identifying themselves as "black", since they are as much white as black, and no matter what your heritage is, you should at least not deny that it's part of you. For example, I'm not sure what Halle Berry's mom thinks about her daughter identifying herself as "black", but I'm sure that I'd be disappointed were I in her position.

This is not to say that I encourage people to hyphenate the hell out of themselves, but being of mixed background should be an opportunity to put certain historical baggage behind us. This doesn't just apply to mixed race, as there are lots of people who are the same colour who don't get along. Someone half English and half Irish, for example, can choose to identify with one side or the other, OR they can identify with both, perhaps.

My own mix isn't too antagonistic, at least not recently, so I have no problem picking the eyes out of the best parts of my heritage. I understand that things are farther apart, more fresh and unpleasant, etc. for many others, so any high-profile personalities that provide a good example in this regard are a big step in the right direction.

So, as far as I'm concerned, Halle Berry is a hottie, no race ID required. By the standards that some people apply to her (as an example), I could just as equally call her a hot "white" woman; she's as much that as black.

Will Pastor Wright sink Obama's run for Pres? I have no idea and I care even less. This will likely push some of his white supporters away, and his repudiation of Wright's comments will ironically push away some of his more militant black supporters too.

As always my fearless predictions are not warrantied, and more of a spleen-venting than anything else.

Jack Layton's "plan" in action, look out.

"Turning point", my buttocks.

One of these yahoos said that this nationwide protest marked the "turning point", demonstrating the overwhelming will of the Canadian people in opposition to our mission in Afghanistan. The biggest one of these protests garnered a whopping 1000 protesters, definitely not a sea-change in Canadian public sentiment, whatever our old pal Jack Layton may have said to the media from Queen's Park.

The sizes of the crowds varied from location to location, with cities like Montreal and Toronto having protesters numbering in the hundreds. Other sites, such as Halifax, had only a few dozen demonstrators.

In Calgary, some protesters wore two hats. One minute they were demonstrating against seal hunters. But minutes later they swapped their placards for anti-war signs.

Everyone loves the professional protester class, and they were out in (what passed with them for) force Saturday, and all over the news. The biggest one was 1000 people, and you can get 1000 people to support almost anything in a city the size of Toronto, so not impressive. The comments from Calgary are also revealing, showing their colours as general malcontents. Well, at least they didn't smash anything. This time.

He gets most of the point…

Dan Garner’s editorial in the Ottawa Citizen today hits the broad mark, but I personally have a couple of issues with his portrayal of the “right wing” blogosphere.

I do find that the alarmism of a lot of those conservative worthies he mentions (see my links list for several of them) a bit shrill at times and certainly wearying in that it triggers my realist/paranoid streak, pushing it more into the latter end of the spectrum. That said, there IS a threat to our western way of life, and probably the reason the LGFs and others of the world are so shrill is that the rest of the media pooh-pooh the idea of there being any threat at all.

There are lots of places that jihadist money could go which would be a lot easier for the notional Propaganda Minister to pull off; various Muslim advocacy groups in Western countries would take money with no compunctions about where it came from as long as it was Muslim in origin. This could of course be part of the multi-pronged propaganda/misinformation approach of this “Goebbels” but I think that there is enough paranoia and honest concern amongst conservatives to be self-sustaining without money from “the enemy”.

Gardner’s big point that the paranoia and Homeland Security-type security theatre are a boon to Al-Qaeda’s plans to suck us into self-defeating and bankrupting foolishness is spot-on, though. That old saw from Benjamin Franklin about a people who give up liberty for security deserving neither is still the best way to keep things perspective.

I have in the past advocated aggressive yet more surgical and economical ways to deal with our half-assed enemies, and nothing I have learned from my first-hand experience has changed my mind. Basic security in airports and a spirit throughout the population to not let clowns with improvised weapons take over our conveyances will suffice to handle our tactical security problems. Aggressive counterintelligence and an ability (and willingness) to act on it would root out must threats pro actively and not require the entire populace to live in a police state. As well, leaving the various shitty governments of the world alone and minding our own business (e.g. Iraq) would go a long way toward safeguarding our strategic interests.

The evident decline of the USA is of a great deal of interest to any of us concerned about the future, and I’ll try to come up with a coherent piece on that in the near future. There is a good bit of evidence that the US is no longer anywhere close to the Republic that it was envisaged to be in the beginning, and a lot of the signs of that decay are the increasing tyranny people are subjected to in the pursuit of security against crack-heads like bin Laden’s crew. The good work being done which actually stops terror attacks is all done under the radar, where it belongs.

It's (not so) Good to be (not quite) the King.

Not exactly cutting edge news, but some reflections on the whole débâcle with Prince Henry and Afghanistan.

It’s not every day that I find myself in sympathy with the rich and famous, but I can totally see Harry’s point of view here. He’s a soldier, and as one he wants to do his job with his mates and his troops, and in my commoner opinion, it’s the best thing he could do. A guy in his position (third in line for the throne) very much needs something he can call his own, and Harry’s time in Afghanistan was that to him.

The psychological aspects of it aside, the whole concept that combat troops in Afghanistan would give a red rat’s ass about having a (trained and competent) celebrity in their midst obviously didn’t originate from the guys he served with. The Taliban aren’t the Red Army, the SS or even the NVA (North Vietnamese Army); even if they were to make an extra effort to take out a scion of the House of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha, their capabilities are extremely limited.

In fact, every effort they make to take out any specific NATO person or thing just gives us a chance to kill them more easily and in greater numbers. I am quite certain that if you could ask any of Harry’s fellow troops, they would say of any Taliban desire to come after Prince Henry of Wales, “let ‘em try”. Combat troops are not inclined in a combat zone to be too concerned about what the other side might like to do, more about what they can do.

Of course I have no idea exactly what’s going on in his head, but in a way he shouldn’t be too surprised that the brass aren’t willing to put him in harm’s way. His relatives and ancestors served, but few of them were allowed right on the front line, and with the nature of the current Afghanistan situation, there is no front line. Thus arrives the flap resulting in the weak-kneed decision (not his) to pull him home.

William is stuck with being the main event, and he’s the one who should have to deal with this sort of thing, not his younger brother. My main (only, really) point here is that Prince Henry and his troops would not have cared one bit that the Taliban would have made a special effort to bag that particular “chicken”.

Any of us “outside the wire” in Afghanistan had a bit of an issue with political high-rollers coming in with their fleets of helicopters and media circuses, because THAT attracts extra rockets, mortar fire, etc. Harry was, on the ground, just another subaltern and would have been difficult for the bad guys to pin down. Besides, he’s a FAC, and you might get a lot more than you can handle attacking someone like that…

The Brit troops are still as good as ever, but their leadership is wanting at the highest levels, and that is the source of this problem. Even if the word was out in Helmand that Harry was there, journalists are very easily kept at bay in that environment, and any reporter compromising OPSEC would be quickly looking for a new job.

Combat Arms troops are by inclination and training quite willing to get into a fight, and I can imagine the Prince’s frustration at being denied the opportunity to finish his tour with the guys. Hopefully he gets another chance or at least finds something else that he feels the same way about that his government won’t screw him out of.

The Ice Age is comin', the sun's going out...

I've been saying this for a long time, but the MSM is finally catching on thanks in part to the unavoidable fact of the current winter. I make no claims to be a lone voice in the wilderness on this whole thing (and of course I picked this nugget off of someone else's blog) but the urge to say "I told you so" to the Inconvenient Truthers will not abate anytime soon.

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

I've travelled a bit in the last year, and a number of normally warm places have been chilled below "normal" in that period, not to mention the snow in the great white (again) norths. I'll be interested to see what Al Gore has to say to rebut this.


There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

Even under the Weatherdome of the GTA they had 70cm of snow in two weeks. The merde blanche in Quebec City is as heavy as ever, etc, etc. Personally I was looking forward to a bit of warming, and the opposite of that causes us northerners a lot more trouble than Global Warming ever could. This just proves that we have no idea what nature will do, which should be a message to the more arrogant climate modelers, but I can't imagine they'll catch it.