Thugs and Ostriches

I worked as best I could to ensure the election of John Kerry as President of the United States. I am a US citizen. I did my small part and then travelled to Seattle for election day. I did this not so much because I have a deep belief in the goodness of Kerry or the Democratic Party, but rather because I felt that the United States is controlled by a junta that is capable of pretty much anything. I felt that needed to be rolled back. As time goes by, that belief only gets stronger. The evidence continues to mount. The latest is recounted in Harpers’ recent article about vote-rigging in Ohio.

On election night in Seattle I sat with other Canadian friends who had travelled south for the election in the lobby bar of the Westin hotel, which was also the headquarters of the Democratic Party. I had spent the day walking around Seattle’s neigborhoods observing the election process and feeling confident we had defeated Bush. Nonetheless, we were drinking heavily, the whiskey and beer flowing fast. There was nervousness because the polls were very close. A dead heat in the crucial swing states. But the buzz in the hotel was great, and the US political atmosphere with the red white and blue everywhere was really energizing and infectious. [Read more]

Able Danger: this will be big

Hurricane Rita is heading for the Gulf Coast. It is now a category 4 storm and will likely get bigger. Hurricane Able Danger is heading for the Bush administration. It will likely get bigger as well.

Why was an extensive surveillance operation that identified and was tracking Mohammed Atta and three of his cell-mates shut down and its findings destroyed 4 months before 9/11? That’s the question that is emanating from the eye of Hurricane Able Danger.

In Praise of the Train

The aviation industry is in for some bad news, and the world just might grow a little larger again if we do the right thing for a change. It seems the commuter jet is a big culprit in atmospheric degradation and climate change.

This should come as no suprise, but we typically think of automobiles and big industry as the main culprits. Hybrid vehicles are becoming more common while alternate fuel aircraft are in only very early infancy. The big winner in the alternate fuel transportation contest might be the train, and as we start to de-carbonize our economies, the train may emerge as the high-speed transport of choice. [Read more]

False Flag in Basra: to what end?

If the rumors are true, and Britain was engaged in false flag operations in Basra and got caught, to what end would they be doing so? It just may be that the Occupiers now see that only Saddam had the capability of holding Iraq together, and inciting Shia populations in Basra and elsewhere through false flag ops will harden the calls for an autonomous region in the south. But this kind of thing never happens, does it? Nobody wants Iraq to break up, do they? To whose advantage would that be?

Re-energizing the Polis

The Polis. That’s the Greek word for our collective political unit: Canada. All of us, along with our parties, interest groups, lobbyists, institutions, activists, radicals, etc. combine to form the Polis. Our Polis is somewhat repressed, I would say. We vote every once and a while, and are largely disenfranchised in the in-between time. We leave things to our “representatives.” I’d like to have more say, but people like Jeffery Simpson don’t think I should.

In his column today Simpson addresses proportional representation. He doesn’t like it. He thinks it prevents governments from being able to take “hard decisions” because including small parties in the mix creates a muddle: coalitions and negotiations and messiness. He doesn’t like the fact that in Germany, their PR system means, post-election, they have to negotiate between elected parties to form a government. [Read more]

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