WIP

I heard about Veterans Affairs cutting their budgets last year, and it doesn't sound like the problem is going away any time soon. It seems like we're following the U.S. example: lots of money for war toys/ not enough money to take care of returning veterans! Harper set somewhat of a precedent, back when he first became Prime Minister, and he was running over to Afghanistan to pose for photo-ops with our troops. Like every other idea he comes up with, it's stolen from the Republican Party play book. And just like the Republicans, supporting the troops means getting pictures taken with them, NOT doing anything for returning veterans! If we dig into this issue a little deeper, I suspect we'll find government bureaucrats looking to squeeze returning veterans on their medical claims. And what better way to do it than to say that they're exaggerating their mental disabilities. Mental illnesses are more difficult to ascertain than physical illness for the obvious reasons that the brain is still very poorly understood, even in this age of neuroimaging machines and developmental psychology! About three years ago, we had a new guy at work, who came from Afghanistan and wasn't diagnosed with any illnesses of any type. But after working for us for less than six months, he starts having the shakes, has trouble sleeping, and experiencing panic attacks. All symptoms he never described while he was in the war theater or when he first got back home. He was on light duty and had an extended leave for a little while, but we couldn't keep him for long since he had been with us for less than a year. So, when his symptoms didn't clear up, he had to be let go. I just hope he's not going through the nightmare of trying to prove his case to a bunch of faceless bureaucrats who are motivated by knocking off new claimants whenever possible, not assisting veterans!

10! I knew this routine has done the rounds, but it's so common it can't be funny anymore. I guess that with media consolidation, and five corporations owning virtually every TV station, they're all getting the same scripts and talking points.

NO, did I say the Canadian Government, or any other government in the world is addressing the problem of declining resources? Just like dealing with carbon emissions and resulting climate change has turned out to be much more difficult to address than first expected, or hoped for; dealing with resource depletion would require a radical reformation of all of the fundamental economic assumptions we have been living under for....well at least since the start of the age of enlightenment in Europe, if not longer. In other words, it's a mess! It's like being stuck in a car that's going over a cliff, and not only can't we find the brakes, most of the passengers can't even see the end of the road approaching.

And during Roman times, some historians believe that Roman officials executed at least 10,000 by crucifixion, and yet failed to stamp out slave rebellions, uprisings and even terrorism in at least one case - the Jewish Zealots continued a strategy of random assassinations of Roman soldiers, and Roman and Jewish public officials. If torture and excessive violence didn't completely suppress unrest back then, how do oppressive global authoritarians think somewhat less extreme methods will work today?

Do I really have to look him up? The wiki entry says he's the founder of the Ismaili Muslim sect in the 12th century. Without further reading, that might indicate that he is on the fringes of Islamic thought and certainly there were no high explosives in existence back then, so how does he relate to the terrorism issue?

Yes, just like the last time. A lot of people must think the oil gets re-stocked as it's pumped down. I kind of wonder if it will take at least a year to figure out what the hell has happened and why. And it could just be stupid, poorly thought out reasons like you mentioned. They certainly didn't think through the full repercussions of working with the Pakistani CIA to create the Taleban in the first place! Maybe, they thought they would just go away after the Russians left Afghanistan. And, it's been noted in a number of places already that cheap oil, just like costly oil harms and benefits allies and adversaries alike. The run up in oil prices benefited Western Canada and maybe the Maritimes...a little, the unconventional oil in the U.S., along with the 'renewables' industries - which Obama has been trying to claim the credit for up till now, and the Saudis and Gulf allies of the U.S. These same allies get hammered for the same reasons that the countries on the enemies list get hit. So, I'm surprised that nobody in the Pentagon or wherever, thinks that oil might be too dangerous a weapon to use, because of all the collateral damage that's going to happen. I think the Saudi-U.S. relationship goes back at least to the 1930's, but after they found that big huge oil deposit, Saudi Arabia allowed the U.S. to elbow England out of the way as the global military and financial power, after WWII. I don't know how close U.S. officials were with Saddam...it seemed like most of their alliance was a matter of convenience while it lasted. But Noriega....I haven't read a great deal about the Panama debacle, which I think was the first place they applied the regime change strategies that have become so common in the last 20 years. And....I don't know how much supporting evidence there is behind the claim - but a number of sources who have tried to study the goings on in the Iran-Contra Affair and related evidence of close relationships between CIA and major drug traffickers, present a picture that Manuel Noriega was a facilitator between the drug lords and the U.S. Government.....until he was no longer necessary and got in the way!

Like so many other issues he's dealt with while in the White House, I don't think this puts Barack Obama in any better light than the general impression that he is a narcissistic opportunist, who's just interested in doing what's best for Barack Obama!

NO, the only unconventional oil that is cheaper to exploit now is shale fracking...and even that is temporary, because once these plays in the Bakken are exhausted, then it's game over...that's why the big oil companies stayed on the sidelines. As for "peak oil bugs"....not only was Michelle Bachmann lucky to pull that $2.00 a gallon gasoline out of her ass, nobody knows exactly where the bottom is in these OPEC states that have state-owned oil companies. Sure, the speculation 10 years ago, that Saudi Arabia had peaked was speculation....but what else do the high priced oil analysts have to go on? I would venture to say that they were deliberately trying to mislead the West in order to drive up oil prices back then. Now, they have reasons still undetermined to try to drive prices down. Nobody can make accurate predictions about how much there is and what the prices will be five or ten years from now, because there is so much deceit and deception among the players involved in this game! What we do know, is that the general principle that the low-hanging fruit gets picked first is still the overriding principle. I wouldn't have wasted all that oxygen trying to give a brief presentation of the difference between "running out" and "irrecoverable" if I thought you would just blow right by it...but that's what it looks like so far. A finite resource that is consumed in order of most profitable sources, will eventually reach the point where energy-return on energy-invested is too high to make the effort worthwhile! If we were sensible as a global community, we would be preparing now for the time when oil and most other non-renewable resources are starting to run out!

If it's about Russia, it's mainly the U.S. trying to put on the squeeze, and Saudi would be in alliance for their own objectives: attacking Iran and Syria. If, by 'Russia attacking another country', you mean carving out a chunk of eastern Ukraine - where most of the population speaks Russian, along with having a sizable Russian minority...best strategy for the U.S. and Canada by proxy, would be do NOTHING! There would not have been a violent revolution and a civil war if the U.S. hadn't been trying to destabilize the country to begin with, as part of the overall strategy of knocking away Russian allies and eventually breaking up Russia itself into smaller pieces...and the president and the Pentagon strategists have never thought about how high the risks could be by attempting to destroy a nuclear power?

Okay, since you're going to reach back a few years, let's take a complete rear view mirror look at the oil business, since it functions along the same patterns as every other non-renewable resource extracted from the earth: "picking the low-hanging fruit first." In the case of resource extraction, that means going after deposits that are cheapest to exploit∧ purest in content, to produce the highest returns on investment. The problem today is $2.00 or $4.00 gas, that "low-hanging fruit" in the oil business is already gone! As the large oil deposits out west and in Texas/Oklahoma started declining, oil companies started looking at the Middle East even before the 1930's. Their geologists found evidence of some huge deposits, relatively close to the surface. The largest oilfield in the world - the Ghawar Field, is located in Saudi Arabia, and went into production shortly after the end of WWII. The Ghawar Field is still being worked today, and still accounts for almost half of Saudi Arabia's oil production. And I think Saudi is still the no.1 oil exporting nation in the world, so that field is still pretty f***ing important for a whole range of reasons - economic, geopolitical, environmental, theological (S.A. is the reason for the fundamentalism and radicalization that spread through the Muslim World). The problem today, is that nobody knows exactly how much oil is left in Ghawar. In the 70's, when Saudi Arabia led the formation of OPEC, they also nationalized their oil industry, and the state-owned company - ARAMCO doesn't let outsiders anywhere near where they can get at vital information that other nations, oil companies, foreign banks etc. would like to get their hands on! After decades of more and more wells being drilled to take the oil out faster, there was a flurry of speculation that Ghawar had peaked in 2005, when it was learned that the ARAMCO engineers started the process of pumping steam and hot water into the wells. This doesn't usually happen until wells start running dry and the developers want to get at every last drop. With word that more and more wells were being steamed, at a time when Saudi Arabia's production and oil exports started to decline, there was a huge run up in oil prices and billions of dollars invested into "unconventional" oil development....everything from deep sea drilling to tar sands and shale oil, potential investors were lining up at the door, waiting to get in on the transition to harder-to-reach and more expensive oil. This is all most of the reason why the general consensus was that world oil production had already peaked in the mid-2000's and would not move higher to meet the inevitable increases in demand. The increase in oil prices and peak oil speculation, was also behind the economic collapses and recessions that we've had during the last eight years. If you build economies on an oil foundation, obviously high oil prices are going to cripple every attempt at economic growth. So, what has happened this year? It's true that Saudi Arabia hasn't increased their oil production very much, but any increase was unexpected, and with all of the unconventional oil coming in, and Iraqi oil finally getting to market, for now at least, we have a glut of oil on the world markets that's driving down the prices. But, this is not going to last! Because however you slice it...even if the U.S. manages to get the oil flowing again from Libya...the trend towards depletion of cheap oil reserves and the transition to expensive unconventional oil continues. The bad news all around for everyone who wants an oil economy, is that many of these unconventional projects are very costly, both in terms of dollars and energy required to deliver oil products. If oil prices fall too low on the world markets (as they are already) most unconventional development stops, and is at least temporarily halted; and some of them may never restart again! Keep in mind, that the major oil companies for the most part, have ignored the fracking boom in the U.S.! It's been left to small time players, because Big Oil did not see enough return on investment to justify moving in their equipment. And Big Oil is already at a stage where rising costs of development of deep-sea drilling and keeping some of the aging oil fields producing, is taking a bite out of their wallets! Not that anyone's going to shed tears for BP and Chevron, but they are not going to see the same huge profits they earned the last time oil prices took off! At some point, rational people and communities, would look at an important resource that over time, become more and more expensive to produce, and start wondering if a time will come when it's time to just pull the plug on that energy source and redesign economies and communities to run without oil....just as they did until 150 years ago. And that's not even factoring in the environmental destruction that oil production has caused for this planet! Yes, it would be a good time to make that transition to a renewable and much less energy-intensive future that we started hearing about over 20 years ago, but as long as we have the entire global community running on a system of capitalist economics, which is averse to planning beyond the next quarterly profits, and functions in a ruthless and totally amoral disregard for consequences to others, we're stuck watching Big Capitalism slowly grind itself to a complete halt! Maybe the future will be with spears and bows&arrows, because we're wasting the resources and energy we still have trying to breath life into a dead horse!

Well, my thoughts are that sending a medivac unit to the Philippines might be good PR over there, but it's not going to be enough to eliminate the stench from revelations about Israel's profiting from death and destruction: “The Lab”: Israel Tests Weapons, Tactics On Captive Palestinian Population By Jonathan CookIn June defense analysts at Jane’s put Israel in sixth place, ahead of China and Italy, both major weapons producers. Surveys that include Israel’s growing covert trade put it even higher—in fourth place, ahead of Britain and Germany, and beaten only by the United States, Russia and France. The extent of Israel’s success in this market can be gauged by a simple mathematical calculation. With record sales last year of $7 billion, Israel earned nearly $1,000 per capita from the arms trade—up to 10 times the per capita income the United States derives from its weapons industry. The Israeli economy’s huge reliance on arms dealing was underscored in July, when local courts forced officials to reveal data showing that some 6,800 Israelis are actively engaged in exporting arms. Traditionally Israel’s arms industry was run by the Defense Ministry, as a series of state-owned corporations developing weapons systems for the Israeli army. But with the rise of the hi-tech industries in Israel over the past decade, a new generation of officers recently discharged from the army saw the opportunity to use their military experience and their continuing connections to the army to develop and test new armaments, for sale both to Israel and foreign buyers. In the process Israel’s arms industry was reinvented as a major player in the Israeli economy, now accounting for a fifth of all exports. Or as Leo Gleser, who runs an arms consultancy firm that specializes in developing new markets in Latin America, observes: “The [israeli] defense minister doesn’t only deal with wars, he also makes sure the defense industry is busy selling goods.” Gleser is one of several arms dealers interviewed in a new documentary that lifts the lid on the nature and scope of Israel’s arms business. “The Lab,” which won a recent award at DocAviv, Israel’s documentary Oscars, is due to premiere in the U.S. in August. Directed by Yotam Feldman, the film presents the first close-up view of Israel’s arms industry and the dealers who have enriched themselves. The title relates to the film’s central argument: that Israel has rapidly come to rely on the continuing captivity of Palestinians in what are effectively the world’s largest open-air prisons. The reason is that there are massive profits to be made from testing Israeli military innovations on the more than four million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to Feldman, that trend began with Operation Defensive Shield, Israel’s re-invasion of the West Bank and Gaza in 2002, which formally reversed the process of Israeli territorial withdrawals initiated by the Oslo accords. Following that operation, many army officers went into private business, and starting in 2005 Israel’s arms industry started to break new records, at $2 billion a year. But the biggest surge in sales followed Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s month-long assault on Gaza in winter 2008-09, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Record sales in the wake of that attack reached $6 billion. These military operations, including the most recent against Gaza, last year’s Pillar of Cloud, the film argues, serve as little more than laboratory-style experiments to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of new military approaches, both strategies and weaponry. Gaza, in particular, has become the shop window for Israel’s military industries, allowing them to develop and market systems for long-term surveillance, control and subjugation of an “enemy” population. Given that most Palestinians are now tightly contained in urban settings, traditional policies designed to maintain a distinction between civilians and fighters have had to be erased. Amiram Levin, former head of the Israeli army’s northern command in the 1990s and now an arms dealer, is filmed at an arms industry conference observing that Israel’s goal in the territories is punishment of the local population to create greater “room for maneuver.” Considering the effects, he comments that most Palestinians “were born to die—we just have to help them.” The film highlights the kind of inventions for which Israel has become feted by foreign security services. It pioneered robotic killing machines such as the airborne drones that are now at the heart of the U.S. program of extra-judicial executions in the Middle East. It hopes to repeat that success with missile interception systems such as Iron Dome, which goes on display every time a rocket is fired out of Gaza. Israel also specializes in turning improbably futuristic weapons into reality, such as the gun that shoots around corners. Not surprisingly, Hollywood is also a customer, with Angelina Jolie marketing the bullet-bending firearm in the film “Wanted.” But the unexpected “stars” of “The Lab” are not smooth-talking salesmen but former Israeli officers turned academics, whose theories have helped to guide the Israeli army and hi-tech companies in developing new military techniques and arsenals. Theorists of DeathShimon Naveh, a manically excited philosopher, paces through a mock Arab village that provided the canvas on which he devised a new theory of urban warfare during the second intifada. In the run-up to an attack on Nablus’ casbah in 2002, much feared by the Israeli army for its labyrinthine layout, he suggested that the soldiers move not through the alleyways, where they would be easy targets, but unseen through the buildings, knocking holes through the walls that separated the houses. Naveh’s idea became the key to crushing Palestinian armed resistance, exposing the only places—in the heart of overcrowded cities and refugee camps—where Palestinian fighters could still find sanctuary from Israeli surveillance. Another expert, Yitzhak Ben Israel, a former general turned professor at Tel Aviv University, helped to develop a mathematical formula that predicts the likely success of assassination programs to end organized resistance. Ben Israel’s calculus proved to the army that a Palestinian cell planning an attack could be destroyed with high probability by “neutralizing” as few as a fifth of its fighters. It is precisely this merging of theory, hardware and repeated “testing” in the field that has armies, police forces and the homeland security industries of the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America lining up to buy Israeli know-how. The lessons learned in Gaza and the West Bank have useful applications, the film makes clear, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Or as Benjamin Ben Eliezer, a former defense minister turned industry minister, explains in the film, Israel’s advantage is that “people like to buy things that have been tested. If Israel sells weapons, they have been tested, tried out. We can say we’ve used this 10 years, 15 years.” Yoav Galant, head of the Israeli army’s southern command during Cast Lead, points out: “While certain countries in Europe or Asia condemned us for attacking civilians, they sent their officers here, and I briefed generals from 10 countries so they could understand how we reached such a low ratio [of Palestinian civilian deaths—Galant’s false claim that most of those killed were Palestinian fighters]. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy: they condemn you politically, while they ask you what your trick is, you Israelis, for turning blood into money.” The film’s convincing thesis, however, offers a disturbing message to those who hope for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. That is because, as Israel has made its arsenal more lethal and its soldiers ever safer, Israeli society has become increasingly tolerant of war as the background noise of life. If Israelis pay no price for war, then the army and politicians face no pressure to end it. Rather, the pressure acts in the opposite direction. With the occupied territories serving as an ideal laboratory, regular attacks on Palestinians to test and showcase its military systems provide Israel with a business model far more lucrative than one offered by a peace agreement. Or as Naftali Bennett, the far-right industry minister, observed—both hopefully and euphemistically—after a trip to China in July: “No one on earth is interested in the Palestinian issue. What interests the world from Beijing to Washington to Brussels is Israeli high-tech.” But possibly worse still, as foreign governments line up to learn from Israel’s experience, the question arises: who else among us faces a Palestinian future? So, my guess is that the leaders of these nations, who never express much criticism of Israel - I can't help noticing in recent times, that even Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and other Sunni-majority Muslim nations would be foaming at the mouth every time Israel started bombing the West Bank or Gaza, and now, they have nothing to say! Could it be because they are also secret allies of Israel? They are likely lined up somewhere (perhaps behind third parties) getting access to Israeli-tested weapons and counter-insurgency tactics, just like the Americans, the Europeans and the South American militaries......you should be proud! But, I doubt any of this wins hearts and minds around the world! Israel might be able to win big weapons contracts, and protect itself as it gradually removes intransigent, non-compliant Arabs off the territories they claim for new settlers; but many people around the world who see their own governments as oppressive forces who carry out the will of despots and foreign business interests, aren't going to be filled with warm thoughts about nations like the U.S. and Israel, who make it impossible to overthrow these regimes, either by the ballot/or through armed uprising!

Whatever the costs, business as usual has to stop! The tar sands need to stay where they are - in the ground. What I'm reading of late, is that the pipeline projects and new tar sands ventures are all put on hold because of falling oil prices. It's just a matter of time before prices go back up again; but after the shakeup in the industry, and the loss of capital investment, it will take a lot longer to get them running again. And if the collapse in oil prices has further repercussions on the stock and bond markets, then it's 2008 revisited.

Yes, it seems like some people are a broken record on this subject...so what if was only 14 years old when his father brought him over there and put a rifle in his hands to fight...and so what if there was no proof that he threw a grenade that killed an American CIA agent...or that it makes a damn bit of real difference in real life whether someone is an "illegal" combatant, or a member of a recognized government army or a private mercenary for a subcontractor....kill him anyway! I think a lot of the people foaming at the mouth about Omar Kadr are just looking for ways to punish his family, and since that's not available, go after Omar. I don't know what sort of man he is today...whether he could be a terrorist or a decent citizen of this country, but ultimately, we have no choice! AS i see it, we don't have the right to prejudge him for what he might do when he is released from prison. I don't think he should have spent a day in Guantanamo as soon as our gutless government realized that the U.S. didn't have much of legal case agasint Omar Kadr. Without gaining a confession through the use of torture, they would have had nothing to legitimize holding him in that purgatory the U.S. Government runs down there in Cuba.

I won't be needing geriatric care! Even wages in high skilled trades have been stagnating or declining, because outsourcing is allowed by so called "free trade" agreements and allowing employers to circumvent the apprenticeship programs to set up their own in-house versions that only teach new welders, machinists, and other trades a limited range of skills, so that they can never complete an apprenticeship program. But, let's not pretend that globalization is some sort of irresistible force that can't be stopped and inevitably follows its course. If a company that shuts down its business and outsource production to China, Mexico, Bangladesh etc. was still facing high import tariffs and duties...like they were in the old days, the corporate masters of the universe wouldn't be able to play this game in the first place! Globalization was a scam right from the beginning. Supposedly, it would benefit everyone: - industry that was outsourced we were told, was too labour-intensive to maintain itself in first world nations and better suited for poor third world nations seeking to industrialize their economies. - so everyone would win...right? The poor countries would have entry-level employment, and we would have cheap products, as we specialized in more technical, highly specialized productive activities. Back when the first FTA was being negotiated, the debate was about who would win? U.S. or Canada....and with NAFTA, Mexico was added to that question. As it turns out, NONE of us won, except for a tiny, monied elite that live off of capital gains and other investment income, They and the CEO's of major corporations are the winners, as most earnings for other people have been driven down as globalization made workers all around the world compete in a race to the bottom....how low can wages go? And, let's not forget the disastrous impact globalization has had on the environment! Especially in CO2 output, as globalization greatly increased supply lines.....adding thousands more miles to transportation of materials and products. The only silver lining in this cloud is that cheap oil won't last for long, and when prices really start to ratchet up, that will provide the only practical incentive to re-localizing economies, and return to producing as much of our own food and products as possible.

On the other hand, she was smart enough to resign from office before that congressional ethics panel had a chance to finish their investigation of her loose accounting of campaign funds. Right! I already mentioned this point, which should have already been obvious to the tar sands-huggers already. It's not like the tar sands or the kerogen trapped in shale deposits are recent discoveries. They've been lying there for decades and ignored...except for some surface tar sand deposits that were used for producing asphalt for road paving out west. As long as there was real oil underground, nobody was interested in spending huge amounts of cash to get it out of the ground and turn it into something that resembles oil. It's too costly in monetary terms, as well as in energy needed for extraction and processing - EROEI is so low that it's why the price per barrel has to be around $80.00 to get at the lower level deposits. Yep, the buyers of these new hummers are going to really be screwed when gasoline doubles and triples a year or two from now, if the Saudis can't maintain current production levels. A price spike will be worse than before, as investors are already starting to head for the exits and pull money out of these tar sands and shale projects. The tar sands operations are big corporate projects; but many of the shale oil drillers are small operations with limited financing. They can't survive for very much longer if the prices don't return to prior levels soon. The fun part is trying to figure out who is manipulating the market, and why? There might be short term advantages if this is really a U.S./Saudi plot to bring down Russia, Iran and Venezuela, but in the long term, the U.S. may have permanently crippled its shale-drilling industry because a return to higher prices won't immediately put everything back as it was before the fall, and there is word that Saudi Arabia is about to announce some major budget cuts to food subsidies and social welfare programs of various types. The Saudi royal family is pretty roundly despised in Arabia....as many see them as blood-sucking vampires who are extracting most of the nation's wealth to use for their own luxurious lifestyles. They have managed to keep a lid on any unrest because of: financing the wahabbi clerical establishment to provide the Saud family legitimacy, mass surveillance and brutal suppressive police tactics whenever there are demonstrations, and because of the government programs that keep the pot from boiling over. But, it should prove interesting to see what happens after they make major budget cuts.

3600! That sounds awfully high. One of my older brothers and his wife, are managing most of our mother's affairs. Her estate and pension are more than enough to cover her costs, but the last I heard, the monthly charge for her semi-private accommodations are still less than $2000 per month. You might want to check with CCAC on those costs! Because, if you live in Ontario at least, there are maximum charges for each level of long term care, and the home, whether its run by a for-profit business, municipal government or charitable organization is not allowed to charge more than the max. price. What's the "Federal Workers Pension Fund?" Or does that mean a group of pension funds that collect from federal employees? Most nursing home facilities are owned by private, for-profit companies. But, the costs of long term care are rising, as more and more new residents have dementia and physical disabilities requiring greater personal care; so I'm not sure if they're exactly rolling in the dough these days! The health care workers (PSW's) at my mother's home complain about being loaded down with more patients to look after. They are cutting costs by asking the family members of residents to cover the costs for outings and special events. Long term care facilities are becoming increasingly overloaded by rising demand. By the time you or me might need these services.....well, let's just say - the best health care plan is to take the proactive approach and be healthy and independent for as long as possible!

I have to say that, here in Ontario, I don't think you are going to find a whole lot of sympathy for the possible collapse of many of these tar sands projects or the Enbridge Pipeline deal or LNG schemes etc.. Because while our oil-funded Prime Minister was trying to turn us into a petrostate, our petrodollar started doing what happens to every country that becomes dependent on oil production for revenues: losing its industrial base! My working days are coming to a close....one way or another I'll be retired in the next five years, but the city where I live, used to be the hub of industry in Canada until it got hit by the double whammy of globalization and tar sands oil. Maybe we can have a little sanity here now and have some industry left, if things cool off out on in the tar sands!

Well, to cut to the chase - a recent interview I heard with political science (I forget the name) expert who was one of Tony Blair's negotiators with the IRA, back when they were trying to bring an end to the civil war in Northern Ireland, noted that ending terrorism is usually impossible until the activist group and the governing power both feel pain! If the insurgent group is making money, winning converts and gaining territory (ISIS for example), they have no desire to end their campaign or revolution even if a government collapses! On the other side, Israel has become the example of the oppressive governing power that has built such an imposing military and security apparatus, that they feel they can keep right on ethnically cleansing Jerusalem and the West Bank, and just keep blathering on about peace talks as the move more and more Jews into occupied territories. However you feel about the Israeli Government....and I have no doubt I kicked a hornet's nest with that analogy, but it's something that needs to be said anyway, because there will come a time when Israel no longer finds it so easy to keep their economy humming and prevent any blowback coming their way. Only on that future day, when both Palestinians and Israelis, come to a realization that the present situation can't go on, will they reach any kind of a real peace agreement. Until then................................................................... The last caliphate collapsed at the end of WWI, and ISIS is not going to bring it back! and most of my annoyance with the Muslims-are-coming fanaticism I see today, comes, not from any real interests I have in their religion, it's because I get sick and tired of strawman enemies presented to us so authorities can take away our rights, and justify surveillance, and increase spending on military and police. FWIW, the same right wing fanatical forces over here that directly attack the interests of women, especially in issues of reproductive rights and public safety, are the ones presenting themselves as the concern trolls for women over there! And, even when it comes to jihadi and terrorist groups, we can't take their world for it either, when they justify all of their actions based on their religious claims! Just as we had our imperialists of the past claiming Manifest Destiny...God gave us this land and wants us to clear out all the Indians, Kaffirs and Arabs who are in the way....it's even in our Old Testament for christs sakes! Whenever there is a war, both countries claim God is on their side....even if they are mostly following the same religions...as in WWI and II. Why is this important? Because there is nothing to gain from attacking people for their religious beliefs or affiliations. If you want to stop a fire, turn down the heat! Don't throw more gasoline on the fire, as all of the idiot Neocons and Islamophobes are doing.

One issue I have had trouble with in recent years, has been the divide between the dire predictions of what we can expect from increasing greenhouse gas leves/ and what's offered up as solutions by the crowd pushing renewable energy as the solution to the problem. It seems simple: the sun doesn't shine 24/7, nor does the wind blow hard enough on a calm day to power the windmills. So, the solar panels on the roof and the windmill can provide intermittent power if we're willing to live like most people in third world countries live - with an unreliable source of electricity. Smart meters and new regulations that allow people to sell power into the grid for rebates certainly could help reduce power demands. But, the fundamental problem is one that most environmentalists don't address or deal with: increasing energy demands from increasing economic activity and increasing populations. The renewables are not really feasible as transportation fuels, and even the windmills and solar panels could be better applied in those third world countries, where economies are growing, but people are accustomed to living with intermittent sources of electricity. And in many places in Africa, cheap solar cookers have replaced burning wood for charcoal and used for cooking. To me, the reason why the last 20 years has been one bad IPCC report after another, and nothing accomplished since the first time Al Gore started riding global warming for notoriety and profit, is that the advocates of "green technologies" are looking for profit potentials like every other industry, rather than looking at where the benefits of renewables can be best applied for the task of actually producing results in reducing carbon production, as noted earlier.

Afghanistan back in the 70's, was a calm and relatively prosperous country in that region back then! Take a look at some of the pictures, or better still - talk to someone who is actually from that country! You weren't there, and neither were the bullshit Islamophobic bloggers and propagandists you take all of your information from! Just like the pot-growers in Mexico, and the farmers providing cocoa leaves in Columbia, the Afghan farmers were not opium addicts back then! The spread of drug addiction is mostly an urban phenomena, and has occurred very recently in all these countries, as the drug gangs decide to open domestic markets, if they can't get their products to America or Europe. I have at least one first-hand source, since a new female coworker just happens to be from Afghanistan, though she grew up in the 80's, in the city of Kandahar when the U.S./Pakistan-sponsored guerillas were fighting against the Russians....so things weren't exactly calm back then! But, her husband, who I talked with on one occasion on the subject, is a little older, and does remember the time prior to the wars! Regardless of what countries they were from, the foreign invaders destroyed the country, and now the U.S. is bitching about the costs of having to pay for keeping a handle on the situation! It still doesn't change the picture - that anyone from anywhere could wander along the roads of Afghanistan 40 years ago...and they were Muslims back then too! Today, you need armoured convoys, and that won't change any time in the near future.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.....or at least a simple argument. That seems to be the be-all and end-all of every issue discussed these days: distill it down to one or at most - two variables, rather than take any time or effort to really understand the problem. And that's at least half the reason why the world is in such a mess! What sense does it make to use their religion as the excuse to blame every problem on, when: 1. Muslims did not invent terrorism 2. The suicide bombing tactic started with the Tamil guerillas in Sri Lanka 3. ISIS is a product of a failed attempt at managing regime change 4. Terrorism is a tactic of asymmetrical warfare....not a religious act...the religious justifications come afterwards to validate the tactics. 5. A global economic and military empire that controls virtually all economic activity outside of a few holdouts- Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea etc., can expect to have to deal with asymmetrical warfare from occupied people who find that they have no means to overthrow imposed dictators or vote for the kind of government that will provide them the power to control their own economies. The War on Terror, with its foreign and domestic widespread use of surveillance, overwhelming police and military forces for imposing their control, does show signs that they expect blowback every so often, and that's why we have secret prisons, the use of torture...including medical experimenting on prisoners, being applied as counter-insurgency weapons. So, we have and will continue to have one U.S. president after another, telling us what the difference is between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim! But, let's just blame all of the problems on their religion!

It could be, but this is really hard to figure out. Because almost all of the U.S. oil production is unconventional...or expensive - it's from fracking shales which require constant new drilling to maintain production, or deep sea drilling, which is also costly. This article I came across on Oilprice.com is predicting the worst - Energy Crisis As Early As 2016, and that may/or may not happen, depending on what else happens around the world this year. But, that article indicates that there are already signs of declining investment and new drilling in the shale plays in North Dakota. This word of warning from an earlier article: As a consumer of oil, you may regard recent sharp declines in the world oil price as a blessing. But... If you work in the oil industry, you will not. If you work in the renewable energy industry, you will not. If you work in the energy efficiency business, you will not. If you work to address climate change, you will not. If you have investments in the oil industry (and nearly everyone does through pensions or 401k plans), you will not. If you live in a country that exports a lot of oil (not just Saudi Arabia, but Mexico, Canada and Norway, too), you will not. So, I'm not sure if the Obama Administration would have planned this out with the Saudis.....they have been taking credit for the shale oil and gas boom...they would at least have to be willing to sacrifice that constituency and Obama will likely end his term in office in a new recession....just like Dubya. I doubt that would be part of their planning, but who knows! It's all getting so weird, it's impossible to figure out if there are any plans or too many competing interests working against each other.

And the Russians should have learned from England's example! History repeats because it sure seems to be subject that world leaders never have studied! It's tragic, especially because back when I was young, I knew a few hippie backpackers who went out to see the world, and walked, hitch-hiked through Afghanistan on their way to Kashmir back in the 70's. Now, we're told that these people are savages and brainwashed Muslim extremists - who are itching for the opportunity to blow themselves up in the company of a few westerners! But, back then, there were thousands of weird teenage-20 year olds wandering through their country and provided meals and lodging by even the poorest peasant farmers along the way. The general principle was that a stranger was always welcome no matter where they were from or what language they spoke. But, after the wars and civil wars that started with the Soviet Invasion, all that changed in recent decades, and now their country is probably the most unliveable place on Earth.

Lately, I've been going back to reading about past empires, like Rome and more recent - the Austria-Hungarian Empire, who's collapse fed World War One. The patterns seem to be remarkably similar as empires rise, reach their peak - where everyone thinks they'll be around forever...friend or foe, and then all of a sudden.....poof! The only question is regarding the state of the world as it stands today - what sort of empires we will see rise up in its place. Maybe it will be one with spears and bow&arrows!

Ha Ha! Go to Oilprice.com and look up some of the new entries on the effects and worries that the developers of America's "unconventional" oil have about oil prices staying below $60.00 a barrel. This will also probably have further repercussions later this year, because most of the fracking of new oil and gas shale plays is financed by junk bonds and venture capital. I will predict that Wall Street is not going to be able to dodge this one without seeing a serious decline....let's see what happens this fall. *just want to add that the collapsing prices that is probably being deliberately caused by the Saudi's and Gulf states as part of their economic warfare against Iran, Russia...and possibly trying to shut down U.S. production also, is not going to last forever! There was a lot of speculation a few years back, that the Saudis' main oilfield - G'war, was running dry, when they were cutting production and increasing oil development in the Shia eastern quarter of their country. Previously, they had been avoiding developing any oil wells in the Shia territory. So, right now, either the Saudis were playing rope-a-dope with other competitors in and outside of OPEC, or they're bluffing and don't have enough reserves to keep pumping out their present rate of oil production. We'll see what happens. For me, I can't get emotionally invested in who wins and who loses in this dirty game, because the real bad news is that we are all screwed in the long run, because regardless of the blather we hear about windmills and solar panels, there doesn't seem to be any road out of Petroleum Age except for ecological collapse!