My Pix

Candidates at the U of T debate, Nov 16.

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As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform - on their way to the top.  

The promises are usually made in Western Canada.  

And these statements of intent are usually warmly received by party activists, editorial writers and ordinary people.

But once they are elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the Government's agenda.


Stephen Harper, September 2006, from his own website.

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the issue is not a matter of perception … you can not claim an expense you did not incur. That is not right, that is not proper, and that will not be tolerated in this party.
Prime Minister Harper's complete non denial.

Harper's Bad Week

   
Unbelievably, Mike Duffy is a hero.  Two days ago, he looked like the archetypical insider crook.  Today he is the only known case of someone publicly defying Stephen Harper and living to tell the tail.  That's bad for business.  Queue the counter-attack.  Not that anything besides monumentally stupid incompetence by the PMO could have restored Duffy's reputation to the point where a counter-attack is necessary or viable.

The worst possible outcome of this scandal is that it could get attached to the Prime Minister personally.  His party is known for enthusiastic betrayal when the leader shows some blood.  Like The Man Who Would Be King.  And the suspension might have passed last week, but its gone now.  Total defeat for the PMO and tar all over the PM.

The most fascinating thing is that the only story having a ring of truth is Duffy's. That he's a self-serving crook makes his story even more credible.  He knows what he's talking about.  It looks like the $90,000 was a straightforward bribe, the Prime Minister knew about it, and probably approved it.  And who created this Duffy monster?  Stephen Harper, in one of his more transparently cynical moves as PM.  His cunning, paranoia and vindictiveness have finally come back to stab him deeper than any enemy could have.

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I hope Putin has taken adequate protections. Now that he is a Russian journalist his life may be in grave danger!
Gary Kasparov on Putin's NYT op-ed

A Red Line in Syria

     Photo: Al Jazeera

It was beginning to look like the Syrian civil war would end in a permanent stalemate.  The Economist predicted the country would be functionally be divided in 3.  The Alawites taking the belt from Damascus to Aleppo and west to the coast.  The rebels controlling the Euphrates valley, and the Kurds their North East portion.  Such a result might be viable as the many 3rd parties to the affair could maintain their interests at a relatively low price.  Nobody would win, but nobody would lose either. 

However, that assumes no game changers.  The apparent chemical attacks this week near Damascus could be such a game changer.  Somewhere there is a red line, and Assad may have just crossed it.

Chemical weapons have not been used widely since they were banned after WW1.  Expensive, finicky, subject to wild swings in efficacy due to weather, and just as dangerous to the attackers as the defenders, chemical weapons have been more trouble than they were worth.  It's simply too difficult to get a reliable tactical advantage on the battlefield sufficient to outweigh the political costs.  Those political costs are based on the terror chemical weapons inspire in civilians.

Assad seems to have found a way to use them as a poor man's nuke.  Lobbing chemical weapons into opposition neighborhoods overcomes the tactical disadvantages.  If they are ineffective due to weather, its no loss.  The distance between your forces and the targets will be sufficient to avoid exposure if the wind blows the wrong way.  There is no effective counter-measure for the rebels.  Though their usefulness is limited to terrorizing civilians.

But there is a political cost.  At some point, after some red line, the International Community will put aside their differences and squash the Assad regime as a common threat.  Last year, the Russians let it be known that they strongly opposed the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  Their current rhetoric insists not that its OK to use the weapons, but absent conclusive proof, they have not been used at all.  Widespread and blatant use by Assad would render that position untenible.  In the big picture, Assad is not an essential asset to the Russians.  They will throw him to the wolves if it suits them.  Iran will still be there, but Iran cannot stop the Western powers if they decide to intervene.

All this means that Assad can go too far and lose everything.  As of today, it looks like the red line has been found.

Why Morsi Had To Go

Debate over the legitimacy of Mohammed Morsi's defenestration continues, with John McCain calling the action a coup. "Coup" is a loaded word because political activity by the Egyptian Military would stop American military aid.  However, this was not a coup.  It was not an abrogation of democracy.  For the future of democracy in Egypt, Morsi had to go.

The Morsi government was a disaster by any measure.  The economy was a shambles and getting worse.  Foreign Policy was incoherent and sporadic.  The security situation in Sinai is a shit show.  Morsi pissed off everyone, the Army, the Police, the Media, the Judiciary, the Copts, the Shia, Islamic clerics, and even other Islamic political parties.  While the country fell apart around their ears, the Morsi government proved interested in only one issue, institutionalizing the Muslim Brotherhood's grasp on power.  At the same time, they frightened just about everyone who did not vote for Morsi by pushing Islamization when he had no mandate to do so.  Indeed after promising they would not.

In the days before Morsi was deposed, 15 million Egyptians came out in the streets to demand his ouster.  Egypt is 3x the size of Canada.  Imagine if 5 million people came out here to demand a change of government.  There would be a change of government. 

The key point is that while elections are the lungs of democracy, political accountability is its heart.  Do a bad job and lose your job.  Morsi and his party were building a system where the Muslim Brotherhood could not be held accountable.  In this way, Morsi was subverting democratic institutions on a permanent basis. For all these reasons, Morsi had to go.

UPDATE Aug 20:
It's important to say that because Morsi had to go does not mean the suppression and murder of his supporters by the military is justified in any way whatsoever.  Morsi's mistakes were political, and subject to political accountability, not criminal prosecution.   The Army is massacring protesters on the streets. 

The Secret Coup

In a secret coup, US security agencies have apparently taken over the United States Government.  With key members of Congress, the Executive has given itself secret powers, authorized by secret laws, interpreted by secret courts.  There is no accountability at all.

To facilitate this takeover, the President, his Administration, its agencies and House and Senate leaders have conspired to conceal the nature and scope of these activities from Congressional and Judicial oversight.  They have subverted the Constitution and broken both the law and their oaths of office, an impeachable offense.

These are crimes under US law.  You can argue all you want, but from Obama on down, the defense of these programs amounts to "If the President does it, its not illegal", to quote Richard Nixon.  He was wrong about that.  And what we are talking about here is 10x worse than anything Nixon did.  Watergate was a personal scandal.  Here, the Administration has declared a permanent state of war, and is permanently suppressing Constitutional rights.

This is not an abstract issue.  Reuters has uncovered that the DEA was getting information from these illegal programs and concealed the source of their evidence from Federal Judges in criminal cases.  That is a major crime and people should go to jail.  Another impeachable offense.

Note I am not just specifically accusing Democrats.  The Republicans are in this up to their necks as well.

Its all going to lead to a political crisis.  At least it better. 

UPDATE Aug. 8
Reuters is reporting that the IRS also participated in concealing the source of evidence gained from NSA intercepts.

From The Campaign Trail

 Peter Milczyn interviewed at his campaign headquarters, July 29, 2013. Only the cameraman showed up.  The reporter asked questions on speaker phone. 

No posts in the last few weeks because I was working on Peter Milczyn's campaign in the Provincial by-election.   It was a great experience.  The best part was scrutineering.  I got to watch the votes counted on my poll and was responsible for checking the count and challenging any ballots I saw as invalid.  None were.  We won my poll, but lost the election.  From my lowly viewpoint as a volunteer (volunteers get the mushroom treatment), the vote was decided by Liberal voters who elected to punish us by staying home.  I managed to turn out less than half the Liberal voters in my poll.  On the other hand, Conservatives came out in droves. 

Yet it was a respectable loss; 46.6% for Holyday, 40% for Milczyn.  Turnout was a bit above average for a by-election: ~35%.  I made a complete fool of myself by saying we would win despite the polls.  I could see we had the votes, and thought we could turn them out with our superior ground game.  That was spectacularly wrong.  I had slipped into magical thinking. 

There were many funny and interesting things that happened.  Like the man who wouldn't vote for Peter because he didn't like his neigbours's fence.  Or the woman who screamed that I'm an asshole, just like her son.  One man called me a dictator for knocking on his door.  The best conversation was with a voter who wanted me to tell him if it was OK to put diesel in his gas car.  I thought not, but he advised that you could get away with 20% and wanted my views about going to 30%. 

Here are a few pictures:

An apartment door in Maybelle.  Pat's in deep shit.

Toronto Hydro's attitude to danger.

NSA Scandal: The Bolivian Plane Incident

Welcome to Vienna Mr. President!

Photo: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters

The shenanigans surrounding the blocking and subsequent search of Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane last week will probably never be publicly explained.  That is the way of these things.  Fear not, I have an expansive conspiracy theory that reveals everything.  Like most good conspiracy theories, this one hasn't a shred of proof.  100% unadulterated speculation. 

For those not following the story breathlessly, here is a write up from The Guardian.  The brief version is that Morales was flying home to Bolivia after meetings in Moscow.  France, Italy, Spain and Portugal denied passage to the plane which ended up in Vienna.  There it was searched by the Austrians to determine if Edward Snowden was on board.  He was not.  These airspace closures were, as has been admitted, requested by the Americans who were apparently convinced Snowden was on the plane.  Just about everyone in South America is up in arms over the incident. The European governments in question are running for cover.  So what happened?

Here is my guess.  The Americans got information that Snowden was on the plane, and they panicked.  Remember that they are still extremely freaked out over Snowden's ongoing leaks.  They don't simply want to get him for what he has done, but for what he might do yet.  So they asked these five European governments to act (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Austria). But Snowden wasn't on the plane.  And all five governments, plus the Americans, are now humiliated. 

Why were the Americans so certain he was on the plane?  The information must have come, one way or another, from Moscow.  American agents could not have seen Snowden get on the plane.  He is at a different airport, and was nowhere near the Bolivian plane.  So the information must have come from from sources in Moscow, or from an intercept.  So that brings us to the crux of the conspiracy theory.  I think the Russians deliberately gave the information to the Americans as a nice "Fuck You", anticipating the panic and embarrassment that would ensue.  Further, to get the Americans to bite on the bait, it must have come from a source the Americans believed in.  Like an intercept.  An intercept like the ones Snowden is in trouble for revealing.  Wouldn't it be delightful if the Russians communicated the false story among themselves through a channel they knew the Americans were listening to?  One that the Americans thought the Russians did not know was compromised?  

If they did pass false information, the payoff was immense.  The incident might be forgotten soon among the general public and media, but institutions have a longer memory.  Trust has been broken.  Politicians are embarrassed.  Careers could be derailed.  And Snowden is still in Moscow.  So it was all for nothing.  Somehow I think the next urgent request from Washington will get a frosty reception in Europe.  Whether they are behind this or not, the Russians must be delighted. 

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“Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value.”
National Research Council president John MacDougall
This is apparently the Canadian Government's new position on publicly funded scientific research. Galileo and Einstein?  Pasteur?  Darwin?  No work of any value there. 

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"This is not a military coup.  Coups happen early in the morning when everyone is asleep, not in the afternoon with 15 million people on the streets supporting them. 
Commentator on Al Jazeera

NSA Scandal, The Other Shoe

As the NSA details continue to leak, I'm looking for one in particular.  In most Western countries, the intelligence services are forbidden from spying on their own citizens.  I'm guessing, and its only a guess, that one of the many functions such services carry out is to spy on each other's citizens and exchange the information, thus avoiding the prohibition on domestic spying.  Again this is only speculation, but it would explain some of the bizarre behavior around Edward Snowden.  European governments are condemning US spying on the one hand, but embarrassingly intervened with the Bolivian President's flight home on the other.  Spain, Portugal and France covered themselves in shame over this incident.  If they are so pissed off about US spying, why would they risk serious international embarrassment over this flight?  Because there is a lot more to this story than we know now. Being seen as American lapdogs is a very poor political position, especially in France.  Possibly the incident was a result of American diplomatic pressure, but I doubt it.  Something more fundamental is going on.  Given the leaks of the last month, I think that something will come out.

The Defense of Marrage Act

    Bill Clinton signs the Defense of Marrage Act into law, September 21, 1996.

The Defense of Marriage Act, just overturned by the US Supreme Court, was as cynical and opportunistic a political ploy as I've ever seen.  That opportunism was exemplified by Bill Clinton, who signed the Act into law in order to clear the playing field for the 1996 election and yesterday cheered its reversal.

The only thing the Act was intended to defend was the Republican Congressional majority.  By creating a controversy, the Republicans hoped to stimulate turnout among their base.  That it fostered discrimination and persecution was irrelevant.

Everyone at the time thought it would be swiftly overturned by the courts, because it was so obviously discriminatory.   Due to the Bush Presidency, that didn't happen. Had it been overturned early, there would have been few political implications.  However, things have changed.  As a result, the overtuning of the Act will lead to full recognition of same-sex marraiage at the Federal level.  In a sense, the opportunistic effort to win the 1996 elections has led to de-facto approval of Gay marriage by the US Government.  And Bill Clinton comes out a winner. 

Pix

I'm not sure if he's a hero, an idiot, or both.

Israel and Syria

Today the Israeli Air Force carried out a series of air strikes against Syrian military targets around Damascus.  The proximate reason was the impending transfer of new, better missiles from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.  They have done this twice before, on Friday they hit some targets around Damascus, and in January they hit a convoy near the Lebanese border carrying missiles to Hezbollah.  However, the target list (including a chemical weapons research facility) suggest the Israelis are trying to send a more complex message than simply no new weapons for Hezbollah.

Remember that Israel has only ever lost one war, and that was to Hezbollah in 2006.  Hezbollah remains the only nearby threat capable of inflicting politically significant damage on Israeli civilians. Right now, the worst case scenario for Israeli security is Hezbollah getting Syrian chemical weapons and the missile systems to deliver them.

The Israelis would probably like to stay out of the Syrian conflict entirely.  There is no military action they can take to ensure a palatable outcome. Obviously, there are no political or diplomatic tools they can use either.  That leaves Israel in a bind.  They can handle Assad, but he is an enabler of the Iran - Hezbollah alliance.  What would follow Assad is unknowable at this time.  Could be worse, could be better, will certainly be Islamist.  But won't be in Iran's pocket and probably won't facilitate Hezbollah. 

All in, it looks like a new regime would suit the Israelis.  But of course they cannot take sides.  Israeli support of the rebels would be the kiss of death and the rebels would reject Israeli help.  On the other hand, strategic developments have taken an unusual turn.  As far as Syria is concerned, Israeli and Saudi interests are starting to converge.  Both are lined up against Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon.  Both would be better off with a Sunni ruled Syria.   Both would be happy with a severely crippled Hezbollah.  Neither is a military threat to the other.  Both are American allies.  I'm not expecting a nice meeting between King Abdullah and Netanyahu in East Jerusalem with lots of hugs and kisses.  But I wouldn't be surprised to find out they are cooperating under the table.

Finally, the chemical weapons are a wild card.  Its hard to divine the truth, but it looks like Assad has been using them in a limited fashion.  Trying to gain a tactical advantage without provoking international response.   This is one area where Israel gets a free pass.  They can bomb the shit out of Assad's chemical weapons capabilities and nobody will blame them. 

Its also worth noting that the Israeli raid shows yet again that the Syrian Air Force is utterly incapable of defending Syrian airspace. 

Sunstone

A very determined group of researchers has found an example of the previously legendary Viking sunstone used for navigating while the sun was obscured by clouds or below the horizon.  The best and most concise article I've seen is this one at The Economist.  If there were a Nobel Prize for Archeology, this team would win it.

Heat Wave

Its a hot summer in Australia.  So hot that government meteorologists have had to add two new colours to the heat maps.  Previously, the scale stopped at 50 degrees.  Now it goes to 54 degrees.  The world is getting hotter.

Article is here.

Toronto's Great Year

    1947 Leafs with the Cup

Oh what a year for Toronto!  The Argonauts win the 100th Grey Cup at home.  Rob Ford is kicked out of office for extreme stupidity.  And the Leafs haven't lost a game this season. 

Syria in October

      Results of an air strike near Damascus October 30, 2012 REUTERS/Maawia Al-Naser/Shaam News Network/Handout

After a very tense summer, the outside parties to Syria's civil war have stepped back from the brink.  The war goes on, but the rebels at least are being starved of weapons by their sponsors.  The Americans are worried about weapons falling into the hands of jihadis.  The Turks, Qataris and Saudis seem to be heeding American doubts.  I have no information on how the Government is doing for supplies, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear the Russians are quietly starving them as well.

In any case, the Syrian military has been notably ineffective in suppressing the rebels despite huge advantages in equipment and manpower.  I'd give a win on points to the rebels so-far for simply surviving. 

So it seems like there will be a cold, miserable winter in Syria with no resolution.  Nevertheless, Syria remains a powder keg.  By far the most important issue in the Middle East today.  That's because (as I've said before) all the regional fault lines run through it.  Syria may end up like Afghanistan where all the regional players would rather have instability than a solid government favouring a different player.  In Syria, its the Iranians against the Saudis.  Neither will accept a government beholden to the other.  So continued war is the safest bet.  As long as nobody wins it.  The Syrian people don't enter into the calculation, unfortunately.