BeaverFever

LMAO That’s not true at all. Add science to the long list of topics you bullshit about

You really ought to read your own links instead of just bullshitting based on the headline. The first article doesn’t say Canada will be better off and in fact it is challenging a climate denier’s claim. Canadian Climate Institute is not a climate denier site or pro-climate change. Their own stated priorities are: Incentivizing clean economic growth and low-carbon competitiveness, Reducing emissions and accelerating Canada’s net zero energy transition Making our economy and infrastructure more resilient to a warming climate. The second link is non/expert editorial in a conservative paper citing the climate denier claim that is rebutted in your first link.

You were already provided a link to NADA which you conveniently continue to ignore. You must seriously live under a rock if it’s news to you that every government and scientific organization believes climate change is real. How many links do you need? United Nations https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/mythbusters?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD9kiAdI9naItlbPyCMGlBRJulPtx&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5ci3psvZhwMVBDMIBR2XRwYEEAAYAiAAEgJY3PD_BwE US government https://www.epa.gov/climatechange-science/causes-climate-change https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/scientific-consensus/ Scientific Community and media : ‘Case closed’: 99.9% of scientists agree climate emergency caused by humans https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/19/case-closed-999-of-scientists-agree-climate-emergency-caused-by-humans The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1103618 Scientific consensus on climate change There is a nearly unanimous scientific consensus that the Earth has been consistently warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution, that the rate of recent warming is largely unprecedented,[1]: 8 [2]: 11  and that this warming is mainly the result of a rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)caused by human activities. The human activities causing this warming include fossil fuel combustion, cement production, and land use changes such as deforestation,[3]: 10–11  with a significant supporting role from the other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.[1]: 7  This human role in climate change is considered "unequivocal" and "incontrovertible".[1]: 4 [2]: 4  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change ChatGPT - ”Is there scientific consensus that climate change is an emergency caused by human activity ?” Yes, there is a strong scientific consensus that climate change is an urgent issue and is largely driven by human activities. This consensus is supported by numerous scientific organizations and studies worldwide. Key points include: 1. **Human Activities as a Primary Driver**: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that it is "extremely likely" (95-100% probability) that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. 2. **Scientific Consensus**: Multiple studies have shown that over 97% of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities. Major scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), endorse this view. 3. **Impacts of Climate Change**: The impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels, increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, and effects on human health, are well-documented. These changes pose significant risks to natural and human systems. 4. **Urgency and Action**: The scientific community emphasizes the urgency of addressing climate change. The IPCC's reports stress the need for rapid and significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, which is crucial to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The overwhelming consensus is based on extensive research and evidence gathered over decades. Addressing climate change is seen as critical to ensuring a sustainable and stable environment for future generations. ****** Honestly a person could keep this up all day every day its the published official position of virtually every government and recognized scientific body and has been for years if not decades. Now we all know your next moves: you’ll scream “globalist deep state conspiracy” so you can dismiss everything above without evidence then you’ll lobotomize yourself so you can forget reading it at all and go back to your lie that nobody has ever provided you any evidence.

So unless you see evidence that Canada alone can save the entire world from climate change, you’ll believe that we should just pollute as much as we want? The entire world needs to reduce emissions. Canada needs to do its part.

False. Every governmental and scientific body states climate change is real and reducing emissions is the only solution. You’ve been shown repeatedly for decades now and all you do is scream conspiracy because don’t want to accept reality.

Wow quite the renowned subject matter expert you’ve cited.

No I didn’t. Buy you’re known for grossly misrepresenting what others say NOBODY has ever said a person’s race should be ignored. What clueless bigots like you are totally incapable of comprehending is that 1) YOU don’t get to tell other people what their race:ethnicity is whether they like it or notA person who appears to your culturally ignorant eyes as Black Indian “Chinese” etc may not actually be that or they may be mixed, or they may have llived her for multiple generations and don’t identify with a foreign culture.. Or may they do. The point is THEY tell you mot the other way around 2)Only bigots like you would believe that people should be treated according to their race….and that you alone get to decide what that treatment is You are nothing but a pathetic LIAR when you say Kamala is “blackfacing” herself. She has been open that she is half black her entire life and participated in Black sororities, attended a black college etc. What’s cringeworthy is Trump presuming to dictate to Black people who is and isn’t black based on his own ignorance, blatant lies and prejudices. Go ahead and delete that inconvenient information so you can go back to living in your clueless fake news Trump cult bubble.

No I didn’t advocate being colourblind Only a conservative could be so absolutely clueless “Acknowledge another person’s colour and treat them appropriately”. LMAO I would love to hear an example of how you do that in your own life I didn’t say IGNORE their race. What Im trying to tell you is don’t make ignorant uninformed assumptions about a person’s race based on their appearance and then dont use those ignorant assumptions to make even more ignorant uniformed assumptions about the person. Only a clueless conservative could think those are your only 2 options Do you not understand?

Not quite. In response to an idi0tic post claiming that all half black people insist on identifying as black,(and implying that is somehow wrong): I pointed out the obvious fact that people who are half black are treated as black based on their appearance regardless of whether they prefer to identify that way or not. So it is others who are forcing the black identity on them. I already explained that. I don’t treat people according to the their appearance and neither should you.

Canadian warship shadowed ‘dual-purpose’ Chinese vessel in Bering Strait A Canadian warship travelled to the Bering Strait in July to shadow China’s most advanced polar icebreaker as the Xue Long 2 transited the passageway between Russia and Alaska as part of Beijing’s effort to reinforce its Arctic ambitions. The Canadian government did not make public this part of HMCS Regina’s trip to the Arctic Ocean until it faced media requests about the frigate’s itinerary this week. The Department of National Defence did not explain why it omitted this monitoring of the Chinese ship from its news release accounts of the trip, which it had described as an “Arctic awareness and sovereignty mission.” HMCS Regina’s tracking of China’s Xue Long 2 (Snow Dragon 2) research vessel came at a potentially fragile moment in Canada-China relations. Open-source vessel tracking websites suggest this took place July 13 to 17. The same ship-tracking websites show HMCS Regina turned off its transponder July 13 in the Bering Sea. Four days later the Canadian vessel reappeared in Arctic waters. …Department of National Defence spokesperson Frédérica Dupuis said in a statement that as climate change warms the Arctic, Canada is seeing more foreign actors with regional military ambitions in the area who seek natural resources, energy and transportation routes. China does not possess territory in the Arctic but has taken to calling itself a “near-Arctic state” with hopes of legitimizing its presence in the region. Ms. Dupuis said China’s Snow Dragon 2 vessel has dual purposes when it enters Arctic waters. Competitor nations “are exploring Arctic waters and the sea floor, probing our infrastructure and collecting intelligence,” she said. On July 24, North American Aerospace Defense Command said it monitored two Chinese H-6 bombers and two Russian TU-95 strategic bombers flying in Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone, a defined band of international airspace that requires the ready identification of all aircraft in the interest of national security. “We are seeing more Russian activity in our air approaches, and a growing number of Chinese dual-purpose research vessels and surveillance platforms collecting data about the Canadian North that is, by Chinese law, made available to China’s military,” Ms. Dupuis said. … The Canadian frigate’s trip also coincided with a visit to the Bering Sea by four Chinese military ships including a destroyer, two guided-missile destroyers and a replenishment ship. The government of Japan identified these vessels through postings on X and the U.S Coast Guard reported encountering the Chinese warships. Ms. Dupuis said HMCS Regina did not interact with the Chinese naval flotilla. … Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa-based consultant who tracks aircraft and ships, said he’s still confused why the Canadian military took steps to reduce its visibility during the Bering Strait passage. “Why did they turn off their transponder, specifically hiding their location, for the transit of the strait and until they had broken off from monitoring the research vessel?” he said. “If this is just an innocent friendly passage, why turn off the transponder?” Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, said he’s proud of how far north HMCS Regina ventured. “It’s extremely rare for a frigate to operate at such high latitudes and it is definitely the record for a Halifax-class north of the Bering Strait.” … https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-warship-shadowed-dual-purpose-chinese-vessel-in-bering-strait/#:~:text=A Canadian warship travelled to,to reinforce its Arctic ambitions.

Those aren’t lies those are your gross distortions of what actually happened and what Democrats actually said The lie machine that has been going full tilt for over a decade now is the Republican Party. Trump’s BIG LIE that the election was stolen being the crown jewel of a lie and fantastic accusation. And that’s before we even get into the crackpot COVID and QAnon conspiracy batshit. .

LOL only a conservative could ask that with a straight face “If I don’t what ‘race’ you are how will I know how to treat you?” How about when you meet someone who appears Black you start by considering them to be a human being whose experience in life possibly includes anti-black racism directed against them and their family regardless of how they identify. Once you get to know that particular person and how their life experiences have affected their worldview adjust your opinion of that individual accordingly, rather than simply expecting them to conform to YOUR views as white person who has never had to experience racism. Liar

Lies. You would have us believe white republicans were falling over themselves to describe half-white Obama as white but he stubbornly insisted on being called black? A person who looks black is always treated as black by white people. In fact that’s been the case since the days of slavery and the “one drop” rule stipulating that one drop of black blood makes a person Black. Do you think if the KKK came across someone in the middle of the night they would do genealogy test to determine if they might only be half black before they lynched them, and if so would let them go? Furthermore Kamala has clearly said her entire public that she’s half black and half Indian so again your made up BS is easily disproven

Nobody says that I know your religion has long claimed otherwise but you would be the last person on earth to know the reality.

Another load of your MAGA bullshit, trying to apologize for your cult leader’s latest racist lies. For her entire public life Kamala has always been open that she half black and half Indian. India is the largest part of South Asia. She attended a historically Black College, was a member of a Black sorority, and as a Senator she was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, in addition to a career full of having to explain her ethnicity to everyone she meets the way all people of colour are expected to. Trump’s lie that she only recently started identifying as Black is just another racist attack.

Obviously he’s not threatening to lill him, he’s saying he’s irrelevant The mental gymnastics Trumptards go through is always good for a laugh.

So to recap: the location s reasonable given current needs, far less expensive than comparable alternatives and all or almost all of the cost will be covered by selling the old location More 24 Sussex-style fake hysteria ginned up by the Conservatives

Over $6-million price for new Canadian diplomatic residence in New York City no big deal, says realtor … “A $6.6-million sale doesn’t usually get much attention because, in the world of Manhattan real estate, it isn’t a significant price,” Ms. Aries said in a statement Monday, responding to questions from The Globe and Mail. “Properties are selling for a lot more,” added Ms. Aries, who is described on the company website as a “foremost expert in ultra-luxury, full-service branded residences.” …In the Douglas Elliman statement, Mr. Aabo said governments are rethinking their real estate portfolios in New York to focus on long-term strategy as opposed to short-term needs. “Purchasing a diplomatic residence in the Landmark portion of 111 West 57th Street checks all of the boxes: desirable location, security, attractive purchase price and long-term appreciation potential,” he said. …In their statement, the Douglas Elliman realtors noted that the property, located in an area called Billionaires’ Row, was purchased for $1,700 a square foot, which is 70-per-cent less than peer buildings in the neighbourhood. They noted that the most expensive contract signed in the past week was a $26.9-million tower duplex in the same complex. … GAC has said the consul general’s current residence was purchased in 1961 and last refurbished in 1982. It is now being readied for sale and is expected to exceed the purchase price of the new unit, GAC spokesperson Jean-Pierre Godbout said last week. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-us66-million-price-for-new-canadian-diplomatic-residence-in-new-york/

Bloomberg Canadian soldiers during a combat exercise near Resolute Bay, Nunavut, in March 2024. Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Opinion Liam Denning, Columnist How Canada Is Defending the Place With No Dawn Liam Denning spent 10 days in the Arctic, where the Canadian military is preparing to safeguard its vast, unpopulated mineral-rich territory from emerging threats. July 29, 2024 at 5:00 AM EDT By Liam Denning Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column. This is the fifth in a series of articles looking at how climate change and geopolitics are reshaping the High North’s strategic landscape, from the military balance of power to the quest for oil and gas and mineral resources. Photography by Louie Palu. You can watch the video feature here. Standing on a thick layer of sea ice, with vague misgivings about the numbness spreading through my feet, I venture a churlish question to the Canadian infantry officer on whose snowmobile I hitched a ride to this remote spot in the High Arctic: “Why are you wearing green?” We’re waiting for the rest of his patrol in the middle of something like a frosted crater; the windchill is around negative 50F. It is a bright morning in early March in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, barely a thousand miles from the North Pole. Chief Warrant Officer Pierre Ouellet’s camouflage looks more suited to the tree line, the Arctic boundary several hundred miles south. White would be more discreet, surely? He answers: “We want to be seen.” That could be Canada’s unofficial Arctic motto. A year before, I was up a mountainside in Alaska with US Army troops training hurriedly for winter warfare. But the US is a continental superpower with an Arctic fringe. Canada, in contrast, is a middling power fringing an Arctic continent: an expanse of mainland and archipelago that makes up 40% of the country’s territory and 75% of its coastline but hosts less than 1% of the population. Ottawa has long fretted about foreign powers stealing in like squatters to some cavernous, virtually empty penthouse. That penthouse includes most of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Arctic territory and acts as the de facto northern frontier of the US. Long a potential pathway for bombers and missiles in the skies, it also offers a potentially game-changing shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans — the fabled Northwest Passage. Beneath the permafrost and ever-less-icy waters lies a potential trove of mineral resources, including the building blocks of the energy transition. As climate change and a fracturing international order draw the world’s attention northward, I’ve come to Resolute Bay to watch the Canadian military grapple with the seemingly banal, but hugely complex and expensive, challenge of occupying its own territory and preparing for an emerging great game at the top of the world. Canadian soldiers with snowmobiles and sleds preparing to load into a CC-130 aircraft in blowing snow at Resolute Bay Airport, in March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Remote and isolated as it is, Resolute sits in the heart of Canada’s Arctic, making it a key logistical hub: the site of the Canadian Armed Forces Arctic Training Center, which includes the only runway this far north long enough to accommodate giant CC-177 cargo planes. It’s also home to the Polar Continental Shelf Program, supporting scientists in the field, including those involved with mapping out Canada’s entitlements on the Arctic seabed — a latter-day extension of the exploratory mission that gave the bay its name, derived from a British Royal Navy vessel sent in vain to find the doomed Franklin expedition to the Northwest Passage two centuries ago.1 Yet there is another reason Resolute Bay figures prominently in Canada’s effort to assert its sovereignty over its Arctic territory. The isolated hamlet on the bay, Resolute, dates from the 1950s and a dark chapter in the history of Canada’s treatment of the Arctic’s original masters, its Indigenous people. In that feverish early Cold War period, Ottawa coerced, or lured under false pretenses, more than 90 Inuit men, women and children to relocate from elsewhere to Resolute, on Cornwallis Island, and Grise Fiord, a settlement on nearby Ellesmere Island. This was done in part to — you guessed it — reinforce Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. Ottawa issued a formal apology for the High Arctic relocation in 2010. A little way out of town near Resolute, a stone monument depicts a man looking toward Grise Fiord, where, about 240 miles northeast, stand a stone woman and child with a husky looking back, mute testament to the separation of families that took place. In that context, Resolute’s name in the Indigenous tongue of Inuktitut feels even more apt: Qausuittuq, the place with no dawn. Master Corporal Steve Aulaqiaq, a Canadian Ranger from the Inuit community of Qikiqtarjuaq, teaching igloo construction to non-Indigenous Canadian soldiers at Crystal City, near Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Yet embedded in that sad beginning also lies a prospective answer to the conundrum of how Canada can exert sovereignty over this harsh and seemingly limitless vista. In Resolute, I saw how Ottawa relies on a largely Indigenous contingent of Canadian Rangers to bolster its Arctic capabilities. Likewise, Ottawa’s commitment to the northern communities from which the Rangers hail, enhancing their resiliency in the face of climate change and other novel challenges, is critical to preserving their presence and the generational knowledge that it underpins. In that respect, Canada’s defense of its sovereignty in the Arctic ultimately rests as much on building a robust and inclusive national identity as it does on fielding a military fit for purpose. Its success in doing so can provide a model from which other Arctic countries, the US included, can learn. Canada’s Arctic Crossroads Resolute Bay sits at the center of Canada’s Arctic territory and sea lanes, about 1,000 miles from the North Pole Sources: Arctic Portal (Northwest Passage); Natural Earth A Desert Made of Water Resolute Bay lies in a polar desert. Stepping off the plane near the training center, a collection of low buildings resembling a moon base, I’m surprised to find myself coughing; the air catches in the throat like an icy dust. I flew in with members of the Royal 22e Régiment, the Canadian Army’s storied Francophone infantry regiment known as the Vandoos (vingt-deux, see?). Some recognize photojournalist Louie Palu, traveling with me, from when he was embedded with them in Afghanistan. For many, this is their first time so far north. A boat on the frozen shoreline of Resolute Bay, in March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU There are a few short roads around Resolute Bay. Lined with poles and wires covered in a rime of frost like old sailing masts, one runs a mile or so north to a huddle of huts and tents named, with real estate mojo, Crystal City. Three miles south, the road heads into tiny Resolute itself, which has fewer than 200 residents. And that’s it. Cornwallis Island is a small patch of wilderness in Nunavut, the Canadian territory that stretches from Manitoba to the waters off northern Greenland. Averaging 0.05 people per square mile, it is a demographic near-vacuum. In my initial briefing, an officer warns: “If you’re lost in Nunavut and you yell, no one will hear you.” The grim echo of Ridley Scott’s Alien evokes a sense of having landed on a different planet altogether. Canada’s Giant, Lonely Arctic Arctic regions’ share of population and land area [graphic at link] Source: Econor Note: “Nordic countries” includes Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. Greenland’s area excludes its ice cap. Click here to watch the video feature. Maybe that’s why the changing rooms, where you suit up for the outside, feel like an airlock. Besides the cold — the wind chill dips below negative 80F at one point during my visit — dehydration creeps up on you. As Captain Phil Simon, a surgeon and medical officer, tells me, “With every breath, you’re losing water.” Along with biology, medics stationed in Resolute Bay need a doctorate in flight schedules: Even a perfect medevac from here takes about 12 hours. A senior officer in the regional command says it was easier moving casualties from Afghanistan to Germany and then on to Canada than it is getting them out of here. Not to forget: Nanook. No short walk around the complex is complete without doing the occasional 360 to spy any polar bears. Nine are being tracked in the area when I arrive, and the safety tips on posters around the base tend to stoke, rather than allay, anxiety. A homemade effort I found pinned up in a broom closet resonated more: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger … except for bears…bears will kill you.” VIDEO: Learning to Fight in Canada's Arctic Territory General Wayne Eyre, who has just retired after serving as Canada’s Chief of the Defense Staff, fully acknowledges that no foreign army is coming over the ice today; if they did, he tells me, “the first capability we would send up is search and rescue.” He is instead looking a decade or two ahead, when more ice has melted and the postwar certainties of sacrosanct borders and free trade, coming apart already, potentially break down completely. In the face of such scenarios, Canada’s military suffers from what one might call diseconomies of scale. The army’s roughly 44,000 regular soldiers, spread across a country a little bigger than the US, would fit inside just one major US Army base, Fort Liberty in North Carolina. Joint Task Force North, responsible for Arctic operations, has around 1,600 personnel today. There is a lot of ground to cover, much of it extraordinarily rugged and lacking basic infrastructure. Corporal Nicolas Villemaire refueling a snowmobile at the Canadian Armed Forces Arctic Training Center in Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU All-out war on the ice may be hard to imagine. But as Omond Solandt, the former head of the Canadian Defense Research Board, observed in 1948, not long before Resolute’s founding, “Everybody knows it’s impossible to fight a war in the Arctic, but we have to prepare for the man who doesn’t know it’s impossible.” So armies must imagine stuff anyway. Incursions by small, specialized forces, or drones — or “weather” balloons — are all too easy to imagine in such open space. As sea ice melts, shipping activity picks up. More than 140 vessels are expected to traverse the Northwest Passage this year. Besides offering another avenue for intrusion, each ship represents a potential search and rescue mission. The seemingly obvious draw is what lies beneath. Gold has been mined in Canada’s Arctic since the Yukon rush of the late 19th century. World-class deposits of uranium, diamonds, iron ore and copper have also been mined, and there are hopes to develop lithium and rare earth metals, too. Meanwhile, the US Geological Survey estimates that perhaps 20 billion barrels-equivalent or more of oil and gas lie beneath the Canadian Arctic. Beyond all this, in several senses, is the tantalizing prospect of one day sucking up rare earths and other minerals from the Arctic seabed. At a military conference in London recently, I heard a senior UK Royal Air Force officer almost casually refer to the seabeds and the poles as “the Klondikes of the 21st century.” Exploiting them is another matter. Besides extreme conditions, sheer remoteness and short working seasons make Arctic mining and drilling time-consuming and expensive. The giant Mary River iron ore mine on Baffin Island, for example, took roughly half a century from initial discovery to first production. For all their potential, Canada’s three Arctic territories lag significantly when it comes to investment in new projects. Canada’s Untapped Arctic Resource projects planned or under construction in Canada’s Arctic and other regions, split by type [graphic at link] Source: Natural Resources Canada 2023 inventory Note: Canadian Arctic comprises the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. C$10 billion is about $7.22 billion. Climate change is touted as a catalyst for more. But sinking permafrost, less predictable sea ice and erratic weather patterns are less like the neat click of a long-sealed vault unlocking and more like the wayward swing of a wrecking ball. And yet, even if one knows all this, what if the other side thinks it knows otherwise? Most Klondike gold prospectors found nothing and nonetheless joined the rush. When it comes to imagined futures, the Arctic is not just a blank canvas but a shared one, too. In stretching to protect this region, Canada’s military is hampered not merely by the vast distances but also by its less-than-vast budget. An updated defense strategy — “Our North, Strong and Free” — promises more money, including funds for new Arctic installations and equipment. Announcing Eyre’s replacement General Jennie Carignan as the new Chief of the Defense Staff — the first woman to hold that position — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted that her appointment came amid “complicated geopolitics and increased threats, particularly to our Arctic.” Canadian soldiers on snowmobiles pass Crystal City, near Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Even the new budget remains below NATO’s current target of 2% of gross domestic product, however. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Bill Blair has spoken of the difficulty of convincing Canadians to raise spending further. As P. Whitney Lackenbauer, a professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and a leading military historian, puts it: “Many Canadians still see the Arctic as a ‘there’ rather than a ‘here.’” One morning, somewhere in among the low hills near Resolute Bay, I watch reservists — wearing white this time — stage a mock attack on an encampment. They are, for all intents and purposes, capturing a patch of nothingness, blank white ground indistinguishable from the wider horizon. Tactical exercises here, as opposed to survival training, are relatively new for this regiment, reflecting the shifting geopolitical winds. For all the spent casings in the snow, and tactical camouflage, a strong element of psyops is at play. These soldiers are demonstrating to anyone watching, foreign or Canadian, that they can fulfill basic roles in a place that, given half a chance, will kill you without any human intervention. Yet they couldn’t do that were it not for a unique part of the Canadian military, one that ties it in a more profound way to this unforgiving land. Canadian soldiers preparing targets for a firing range near Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Ranger Time The secret to building an igloo is a spiral. You lay down blocks of hard-packed snow — “like sawing Styrofoam,” a sweating soldier tells me — in a ring and then cut a deep, slanted notch in one of them. That is the sloping start of the wall building up, round and round, higher and higher, to the apex. I am watching Master Corporal Steve Aulaqiaq, clad in a red parka, frost clinging to his mustache, as he slowly disappears, walling himself up inside a white dome. He is a Canadian Ranger. The Rangers, founded in 1947, are a part-time force numbering around 5,000, with about 1,500 of those in the Arctic, most of them Indigenous. They’re not combatants; they are the military’s eyes and ears in the emptier spaces of northern Canada, tasked with seeing something and saying something rather than shooting someone. Yet they are far more than that. They’re teachers, pathfinders, weather experts and, in this setting, even protection from bears. Corporal Anuga Michael from the Inuit community of Pangnirtung, in Crystal City, near Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU That morning when I discussed camo with Ouellet, several Rangers were teaching a squad of Vandoos how to hunt seal and fish through the ice. Most of the Rangers hail from Arctic or sub-Arctic communities to the south. They aren’t superhuman; I see signs of frostnip, especially around the eyes, evidence of wind cutting against exposed skin on long snowmobile patrols. But the Rangers’ acclimatization sets them apart. While I fret about my feet getting frostbite despite triple-layered boots, one Ranger kneels on the ice, pulls off his gloves and reties a sled with bare hands. That sled, called a komatik, is itself a form of Indigenous technology. Wooden runners and cross-pieces are lashed together rather than nailed — an elegantly simple design that makes them sturdy yet with enough give to handle rough Arctic terrain. As a metaphor of the pragmatism and adaptability this place demands, they are hard to beat. The Rangers have a quiet presence. For all the incongruity of the Vandoos’ green camo, it’s the Rangers’ outfits that I’ll remember: seal-fur gloves, a bristling coat fashioned from nearly 10 beaver pelts, a striking green cap made from the skin of a harp seal. All stuff that is suited to, and of, this place. It is a tangible facet of the Rangers’ role as living links to the land, waters, animals and people of Canada’s Arctic. They carry generational knowledge of how to survive and thrive here. Master Corporal Kadin Cockney from Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, whose mother is a Ranger, describes a life that’s been defined by seasons of migratory hunting and fishing. Sergeant Noah Mosesee, who has been a Ranger on and off for 21 years, hails from Pangnirtung, or Pang, on Baffin Island and tells me proudly about teaching his youngest son to hunt caribou when he was just 3. Master Corporal Kadin Cockney (l) and Sergeant Noah Mosesee (r)Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Highly trained as they are, the regular military would be lost out in this wilderness without the Rangers’ guidance. “Our Rangers are teaching the army experts. So who’s really the expert: the person who lives here or the person who came up for a visit?” says Sergeant Shawn Spencer, one of the Ranger Instructors who act as a critical link between the Rangers and the regular army. Ranger Instructor Warrant Officer Benjamin Marier (l) and Master Corporal Steve Aulaqiaq (r)Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU He characterizes the Rangers as “more organic” than the conventional military — a difference in culture but also a reflection of komatik-like adaptability. Like plans colliding with first contact, rigid army schedules don’t fare well where sudden blizzards chew up days and methodically preparing for the field, with its myriad challenges, takes precedence over a 9 a.m. deadline. “We call it ‘Ranger time,’” says Spencer. Canadian soldiers salvaging snow blocks to build walls around their tents in Crystal City, near Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU To be sure, no meaningful military presence would be possible up here without aircraft, snowmobiles and other modern intrusions. But technology invites hubris. Night-vision goggles fail as batteries succumb to the cold. Condensation hampers automatic weapons (the Rangers use bolt-action rifles). Crashed aircraft are sprinkled across the Canadian Arctic like whale carcasses, melancholic monuments to nature’s final word. Canadian soldiers boarding a CC-130 aircraft at Resolute Bay Airport, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Canadian and US military personnel survey the wreckage of a Royal Canadian Air Force CC-130 aircraft that crashed in 1991 near Alert, Nunavut, June 2016.Photographer: Louie Palu/ Agence VU The skills embodied and taught by the Rangers are vital adjuncts, and backup, to all that. Given that regular soldiers only rotate through the High North periodically (a challenge for the US Arctic effort, too), the Rangers also provide a thread of continuity. Lackenbauer, the historian, calls them a “unique Canadian solution to how to have a meaningful military presence in such a vast area with such a minimal conventional military.” In other words, non-combatants though they are, they punch well above their weight. There is an elegiac moment as Aulaqiaq, who joined the Rangers 50 years ago, begins igloo instruction. Blade in hand, he stands facing a semicircle of Vandoos. Beyond him is an Ozymandian snowscape dotted with the sunken shapes of collapsed old igloos that soldiers scavenge for ice blocks like stones from classical ruins. “This is how we used to live,” Aulaqiaq tells them. “But not anymore. It’s just a story.” As he works, he explains that, when he was a young man, if you couldn’t build an igloo, then you couldn’t get married. You had to be a literal homemaker. When he finally cuts his way out of the completed igloo and pulls himself up from the snow, he thrusts his arms up and shouts “Now I get married!” Everybody laughs. But as he said, the story has moved on. A raw, frozen Arctic char chopped into pieces by a Canadian Ranger for eating on the sea ice near Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU The Hut at the End of the Earth One reason climate change can seem abstract is that it is often portrayed in numbers: temperature variances, ice thicknesses and so forth. When I speak with David Burgess, a research scientist with the Geographic Survey of Canada, he begins by talking instead about a hut. When scientists first began visiting uninhabited Meighen Island in the 1960s to measure its ice cap, flying in by ski-plane from Resolute Bay, they built a hut for shelter and storage. By 1975, the hut was covered by accumulated snow. So they built another one on top. By 2004, that one was covered, and a third was needed. It was the last. By 2008, the year oil prices hit their all-time peak, heavy thawing had begun. “The whole thing just melted right out and blew over in 2013,” Burgess says. We’ve entered the era of falling huts. Melting ice in the Arctic stokes adventurism and an oft-touted “scramble” for position. The verb is wrong — try scrambling when you have to get on five layers just to walk outside for five minutes — but the impulse is real enough. As the sea ice has thinned and retreated, the decades-long legal, scientific and, ultimately, diplomatic process whereby Arctic nations divide up economic rights on swaths of the polar seabed has heated up. A Canadian soldier crawls out of an igloo in Crystal City, near Resolute Bay, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU Canada has proposed its own boundaries, under United Nations auspices, which overlap with Russia’s and Denmark’s (via Greenland), as well as a little with those of the US. The scale can be hard to grasp. Canada’s offshore exclusive economic zone and proposed extended continental shelf add up to about 3.4 million square miles, almost as big as the country’s land area. Add renewing Canada’s aging navy to its list of priorities competing for dollars. Canada’s Arctic Rivals Proposed extended continental shelf boundaries of Arctic countries Canada US Russia Denmark Norway Sources: Natural Earth; Oceans and Law of the Sea; United Nations; US Department of State Besides hard choices on spending, addressing Canada’s Arctic conundrum requires more lateral thinking about its objectives and strengths. “We often associate sovereignty with lines on a map, but it’s best understood as everything that goes on within those lines,” says Lackenbauer. In the Canadian context, much of that internal dynamic revolves around the Indigenous peoples who live there and their relationship with Ottawa. This, too, is threatened by climate change. Glaciers are sources of water here, oases in the polar desert; their disappearance risks drought for those relying on them. Thinner, less predictable ice presents a hazard for snowmobiles. Burgess mentions a program called SmartICE, whereby sensors pulled by hunting parties track conditions and find the safest paths, like Waze for ice — ingenious if unfortunate in its necessity. Retreating sea ice also leaves coastlines more prone to erosion and violent storms. With the relationship to the land and sea so central to Indigenous ways of life, the changes now being wrought on the environment undermine the very foundations of these Arctic communities. Survival techniques based on centuries of hunting seasons and weather patterns face possible obsolescence. They are also at risk from sheer neglect. Elon Musk’s Starlink network has transformed internet access around Resolute Bay. I even see a telltale oblong antenna tucked behind a hut at Crystal City. While I am old enough to remember life long before instant messaging and streaming, the youngest recruits to the Canadian Army in 2024 will have been born in 2007, the year the iPhone debuted. They are wired differently. Several Rangers speak in subdued tones of the increasing difficulty in passing on traditional knowledge to younger generations distracted by devices or the lure of lives elsewhere brought to life on handheld screens. I heard similar concerns expressed last year by elders in the remote fishing villages of western Alaska. When I spoke with General Eyre just before his retirement, he envisaged the Rangers’ role in Arctic operations expanding but nonetheless also raised the need to “reevaluate our training model.” Whereas Ranger recruits are expected to arrive downloaded with the skills necessary to survive and thrive, that assumption may also be a casualty of change. Snowmobiles, komatiks and jerry cans with fuel are lined up by Canadian soldiers next to shipping containers at the Canadian Armed Forces Arctic Training Center in Resolute Bay, which is also hosting US soldiers for training, March 2024.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU A phrase I hear several times around Resolute Bay is that “we are guests here,” referring to the non-Indigenous personnel. It seems an odd thing to say when the whole point of this exercise is to demonstrate that Cornwallis is as Canadian as Toronto or Vancouver. It also reflects an essential truth: Canada’s Arctic sovereignty is best understood not as a flag planted in the ice but as a more nuanced construct of overlapping circles or layers. Resolute bridges a history of blunt-force, colonial sovereignty and a more useful, modern relationship between Ottawa and the hinterland. The Rangers personify this on a military level. Meanwhile, the government of Nunavut, carved out as a separate territory 25 years ago, just gained authority over resource development there from the federal government. Even the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, which guards the skies and waters around Canada, Alaska and the Lower 48 states, is an exercise in pooled sovereignty, and a remarkable one at that. In terms of new military spending, an obvious priority is bolstering and replicating logistical and training centers like the one at Resolute Bay. Sovereignty demands, at a minimum, presence, or at least the capability to manifest it when needed. And up here, that in turn demands the refuge and connectivity such hubs provide. Beyond the military budget, however, spending on public services and civilian infrastructure is what makes sovereignty — in the sense of people actually living in a place — possible at all. Federal transfers to Nunavut of C$50,000 or so per person are higher than the per capita GDP of most countries. Even so, the region scores poorly relative to other Arctic regions in terms of life expectancy and, shockingly so, infant mortality. This represents more of a gap in defenses than a paucity of icebreakers. Canada’s Arctic Demographic Deficiency Demographic and economic indicators for Arctic regions, grouped by area [graphic at link] Source: Econor 2018 data Note: “Nordic countries” includes Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. As much as today’s Arctic narratives revolve around climate change opening things up, it is best understood more tangibly as a force bearing down. The cost of maintaining communities on the polar edge will keep rising. Canada’s balancing act of shared sovereignty here is vital and must enlist a unified cast: military personnel like the Vandoos and Rangers, but also climate scientists, health-care providers, engineers and, wherever possible, industries to provide employment and revenue. The concept of total war is a familiar one, but preserving the Arctic requires something like total defense. For the place with no dawn to be defendable, it must first remain viable. A Canadian soldier walks through a valley near Resolute Bay, in February 2018.Photographer: Louie Palu/Agence VU More From This Series June 4, 2023 Read: Hiding an Army at the Top of the World June 4, 2023 Watch: A Look Inside the US Army Training Camp in Alaska July 10, 2023 Read: Drilling for Oil on the Moon July 10, 2023 Watch: Alaska’s Energy-shipping Advantage July 10, 2023 Watch: Mission to Deadhorse, Alaska July 14, 2023 Watch: What Native Alaskans Say About Drilling Oct. 22, 2023 Read: Red Alert for America’s Wild Arctic Fishery — With assistance from Elaine He This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column. 1.Sir John Franklin’s expedition to explore sections of the Northwest Passage in two Royal Navy ships in 1845 met with disaster. Another ship sent to find Franklin and his crew, HMS Resolute, also became trapped in ice and was abandoned in 1854. Eventually recovered, some of its timbers were used to construct the Resolute desk that sits in the Oval Office to this day. View in article https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/features/2024-07-29/as-arctic-race-heats-up-canada-struggles-to-defend-its-land-with-no-dawn

Trump Backers Are Talking Up Possible Civil War Last week, at J.D. Vance’s first rally as the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee, Ohio state Sen. George Lang said that civil war would be necessary if former president Donald Trump does not win the 2024 presidential election. “I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County’s J.D. Vance are the last chance to save our country politically. I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved,” Lang said, as the crowd erupted in raucous applause. … Shelby Busch, Arizona Republican National Convention Chair In June, a video dropped revealing Shelby Busch, Arizona’s RNC chair, asserting that she’d lynch Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican who helped oversee the 2020 presidential election in Georgia’s Maricopa County. “Let’s pretend that this gentleman over here was running for county recorder,” Busch said, according to the Washington Post. “And he’s a good Christian man that believes what we believe. We can work with that, right? That, that’s unity.” She continued: “But if Stephen Richer walked in this room, I would lynch him. I don’t unify with people who don’t believe the principles we believe in and the American cause that founded this country. And so, I want to make that clear when we talk about what it means to unify.” … Georgia State Sen. Colton Moore In August of last year, State Senator Colton Moore, who was banned from the House floor in March for calling another legislator “corrupt” in a speech, suggested a civil war would break out if Trump wasn’t reelected. “Do you want a civil war? I don’t want a civil war,” saidMoore in a video. “I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so.” … Kandiss Taylor, Host of Jesus, Guns, and Babies Right-wing podcast host Kandiss Taylor has been aboard the Trump Train for quite some time. In 2022, after losing the Georgia GOP gubernatorial primary to Brian Kemp by 70 points, she refused to concede the results, following in Trump’s footsteps. So it should come as no surprise that she said, in 2023, that her side was prepared to “use guns” against Trump’s perceived enemies. “This is war, and I hope and pray it gets resolved before we use guns…we’re at war right now, a war for our freedom,” said Taylor on a podcast in 2023. … Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock In August 2023, Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock was caught on tape saying Democrats’ opponents would “shoot someone,” and the country would descend into civil war, if the government continued to charge Trump’s followers with election crimes. “The goal is communism, right?” Maddock said during a fundraiser in his Michigan home, according to the Michigan Advance. “Or Marxism, the Democrats’ dream, right? But what’s going to happen before that? Someone’s going to get so pissed off, they’re going to shoot someone.” Maddock continued: “That’s what’s going to happen. Or we’re going to have a civil war or some sort of revolution. That’s where this is going. And when that happens, we’re going to get squashed. The people here are going to be the first ones to go.” He later compared the prosecution of January 6 protesters to Nazis leading Jewish people to the gas chambers during the Holocaust. … North Carolina Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson North Carolina’s lieutenant governor is known for his wild statements, but this one takes the cake. On June 30, Robinson went on a screed about “wicked people” on the left, wrapping up his rant by appearing to endorse deadly force on those who oppose him. “Some folks need killing!” Robinson said, according to the New Republic. “It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity!” “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” he added. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/trump-vance-civil-war-gop-political-violence/

Well I don’t think mocking someone for incorrectly predicting Biden would loose in a landslide is definitive proof he’s a Biden supporter. Gab is a cesspool for alt-right kooks why would any “Biden supporter” hang out there? Besides I don’t fully trust and believe the alt-right kook making these claims, if it’s true it’s probably not the whole story

Interesting, I haven’t heard that they’re storing additional LAVs in Latvia or will be employing the Light Bn as mech upon arrival. If so, that would make the purchase of these light vehicles and the ongoing Light Forces vehicle project a curious decison. Yeah exposure to the elements and winter weather is an obvious limiting factor. The reason the US developed this Infantry Squad vehicle instead of continuing to use their Humvees (which would apply to our G-wagons) is that: 1) Using a Humvee/G-wagon takes more vehicles to move the same number of troops, increasing the logistical burden 2) infantry sections (“squads” in US language) have to be broken up into smaller groups during the movement which results in excessive clusterf*cking when embarking and disembarking . What the US wanted was an off-road vehicle that could fit an entire infantry section and would allow them to mount and dismount quickly.

On paper it looks that way, given that the 3 Baltic states collectively have a population the approximate size of the Greater Toronto Area and narrow territory. I will point out however the following factors: 1) Russian Navy doesn’t have free run of the Baltic Sea, which is increasingly referred to now as being practically a “NATO lake” given Sweden and Finland joining the alliance 2)The build up and mobilization Russian forces and logistics will tale weeks and months and will not go unnoticed by allies 3), NATO is not Ukraine, which Russia still can’t conquer 2.5 years and more than a half million casualties later despite the fact Ukraine is fighting with a hodge-podge of hand-me-down equipment from a dozen different countries and several different deadens. 4) A Russian invasion and attack on NATO would not be contained to just the Baltics. Russia would have to reserve most of its combat power to defend its entire territory on all fronts from a NATO counterattack and air/missile strikes that could come from Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Alaska or over the North Pole 5) Realistically, enough people believe that any direct action between Russia and NATO could quickly escalate to Nuclear War so to make an actual war very unlikely. The name of the game is simply credible deterrence with the tripwire force is effectively a tripwire for nuclear war The tripwire force has to be big enough that its loss would be considered a direct attack on the alliance nations, and also large enough that it wouldn’t simply surrender or be captured without a fight (and therefore fail to ‘trip). The Russians probably calculate that a battalion-sized tripwire force that could be captured without a shot by a Russian division and chained to flagpoles as human shields a-la Former Yugoslavia wouldn’t trigger the tripwire and neither would a very small number of NATO casualties if a decisive Russian victory came quickly enough Therefore the tripwire need only be sufficient to ensure Russians understand that the defended territory has enough troops in enough places such that substantial casualties and major escalation will ensue if invaded, there will be no quick victories that can be diplomatically smoothed over afterwards

But they already had that with the battle group before scaling up to brigade. In fact I think they lost a battle group member who is going to head up another brigade. I think the he scale up added size and complexity but not diversity

The Baltics do seem to be pretty indefensible. But them why scale up to full brigade