Blair FAIL . . .

— Billy ponders a river in Egypt —

BILLY, YA DONE GONE AND SCREWED THE POOCH. According to the Toronto Star, "G20 aftermath: Civilian police board barely asked any questions in leadup to summit", Captain Billy was less than efficient:

The report blames the federal government — which gave Toronto police four months to plan an event that typically requires up to two years of preparation — for contributing to the Toronto police’s shortcomings during the summit.

But it also found the police board was largely in the dark about policing plans and G20 operations.

While some board members felt Chief Bill Blair was being “secretive” or withholding operational information from them, Morden concluded the onus was still on the board to seek out the information it needed to ensure proper civilian oversight.

Just wait for Billy and Dalton to start squealing how innocent they are . . . Memo to Billy: time to go, dude, time to go, before you cause more embarrassment to the force that others, brave men like Const. Leslie Maitland gave their lives in service to their citizens. Billy: compared to them, you are a disgusting piece of political flotsam.

Famine stalks the Juche Joint . . .

NORTH KOREA just can't seem to get a break. According to the Telegraph, "North Korea facing worst drought in 100 years", North Korean soldiers have been dispatched to water crops that are withering in the worst drought to affect the country in more than a century, with the United Nations warning that yields for staples such as wheat, barley and potatoes will inevitably be affected.

— field of broken dreams —

The maize crop stands a mere 15 inches tall in many places in North and South Hwanghae provinces, instead of the 60 inches that it should be by now, farmers said.

Nearly 50,000 acres in western parts of the country - known as the breadbasket of North Korea - have been affected by the drought, which will worsen an already acute food shortage. In September, the United Nations World Food Programme warned that 3.5 million people were at risk of malnutrition and starvation in North Korea, which has a total population of 24 million.

And while the nation appears to have weathered that potential crisis, a shortage of summer crops this year will lead to more shortages in the bitterly cold winter.

The question is, what are the generals behind the new puppet going to do about it? Can this latest Kim iteration, Kim Jong-un, do anything about it? Could it lead to North Korea's perestroika? Or a desperate invasion of South Korea? The new year should be very interesting . . .

Right Turn. Wrong Way . . . .

Go.

Read today's Adbusters post.

He was right. 

We won't recognize Canada when he's through with it . . . .

Dear Enbridge ...

Up yours. 



And you too, Pooky.



Now go read what the Vancouver Province did.

Censorship?

YA GOTTA WONDER. Time Magazine's December 5, 2011, Vol. 178, No. 22 cover.

Illusions and perspective . . .

BIRTHERS, BAGGERS and all sorts of wackos from Hannity to Limbaugh have turned US politics into the sort of sanity observed in midget wrestling. It seems that reality for the US voter is based on an illusion as you see above, courtesy of Connect-the-dots-usa. The egalitarian Republic is a fairy tale.

Now, add religion to this, and hoowee! Religion and Politics takes a close look at Gopper fundamentalism. Courtesy of The Motley Cow. It seems that believing in talking snakes helps one believe in dumpster-diving as a societal ideal.

In recent decades, “big tent” conservatism has seemed on the brink of collapse, its poles buckling under competing constituencies with “values” voters in one corner pitted against fiscal conservatives in the other. Discussions among academics and media pundits suggest these are two distinct categories of Republicans—the former made up of mainly working-class white evangelicals and the latter historically comprised of higher-income whites. Republican politicians must seek the favor of both special interests, appealing not only to traditional social issues—gay marriage and abortion—but also to economic fare such as reducing government and lowering taxes.

• • •

In fact, for many white evangelicals, religious and economic spheres are conceptualized as two sides of the same coin. They describe their worldview as one in which the spiritual and the material are mutually dependent and interactive. And the popularity of this worldview cuts across social class.

November's election is going to be the Greatest Show on Earth . . .

Like Kirby says . . .

KIRBYCAIRO'S blog posting is one of the best overviews of the problem facing the Liberals  that I have had the pleasure of reading. Gets to the hard-core center of the Liberal problem. See what the man has to say: Look for Solutions to the Real crisis or continue in Irrelevance. . ..

Our Dawg in this fight . . .

DAWG PUTS THE BITE ON BIGOTS: according to the Winnipeg Free Press, "Ontario court orders blog-based libel case to trial".

TORONTO - A right-wing political commentator should face trial for referring to a blogger as a Taliban supporter during a heated online exchange, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Thursday.

The unanimous decision set aside a lower court ruling that dismissed the case against Roger Smith, an active participant in the blogosphere and regular contributor to the conservative website FreeDominion.ca.

Smith was accused of defamation by John Baglow, who operates the left-leaning Dawg's Blawg and brought his case before the Superior Court of Justice last year.

Slander is ugly, so give 'em hell, Dawg, give 'em hell. Nice new site.

Not politically-correct . . .

BUT VERY SATISFYING. One less perv is good. Maybe he was misunderstood, maybe he had a rough childhood. Whatever his problem was, he's discussing it one-on-one with God, if you believe that sort of thing, and if you don't, take cheer in that the sumbitch's constituent molecules will get re-cycled. And daddy didn't even use a gun . . . that's almost un-American.

You can't get there, from here . . .

THE NEW YORKER has a fine article for you to ponder: Jonah Lehrer posted "Why Smart People Are Stupid" in the Frontal Cortex blog, in which it is noted that research shows that the smarter people are, the more susceptible they are to cognitive bias. Good ol' h.sapiens may at times be a rational animal, but he is always a rationalizing animal, with a capacity for self-deception and wishful thinking that is unique on Earth.

Times are changing . . .

 — MQ-4C Triton —

THIS IS ABOUT THE FUTURE, and choices we have to make now, that we will have to live with for decades. We've been watching Stevie and AIRSHOW stumble around like a pair of drunks as they pursue their F-35 financial fetish. And the F-35 has problems, as we have seen: it's behind schedule, and vastly over-budget, and as some fairly knowledgeable people have observed, it's not really what Canada needs, just what Stevie wants.

So, this is old news, and why dredge it up? Well, there were a couple of happenings this week that might offer interesting alternatives to the F-35. The US Navy is proceeding with its program to acquire RPV (remotely piloted vehicles)-drone (autonomous, self-controlled) capabilities for both surveillance and interception. These drone-RPV's are not the Predators that have the Taliban so upset, the Predator is like a WW1 Sopwith Camel, and these are like WW2 F-4U Corsairs, faster, deadlier, tougher, with all-weather de-icing, and capable of the "controlled crash" of carrier landings.

The first happening was an "oops!" — the USN reported the crash of one of their "older" prototype BAMS-D vehicles. They are unarmed, improved versions of the Northrop Global Hawk, with BAMS as their mission: Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, but BAMS-D is an interim model; it's full-strength BAMS that the USN is developing for the decades ahead. What's a BAMS? A heavy-duty Global Hawk, called the MQ-4C Triton.

 — X-47B UCLASS hunter-killer —

— Boeing's UCLASS design —

BAMS takes off and lands solely from land and is operated by a four-person crew – including one pilot – from a ground control station. The pilot uses mouse clicks on a computer screen rather than stick and rudder to fly the plane. When BAMS departs or arrives on U.S. territory or flies within 12 miles of the coast, the Navy will need a special FAA waiver to fly in public airspace called a Certificate of Authorization (COA), just as the Air Force does when its Global Hawks depart or arrive at their home bases in California and North Dakota. COAs typically require that a manned chase plane provide "see and avoid" capability for a UAS.

Once outside U.S. airspace, BAMS can cruise at altitudes well above most air lanes used by passenger jets and other manned aircraft. Unlike Global Hawk, however, BAMS will be able to descend to lower altitudes if necessary to more closely examine items of interest picked up by its ISR radar or daylight and infrared cameras.

An RPV-drone that will be flying in commercial airspace, if its controllers want. The Navy is also putting a two-way radio on BAMS so its crew can talk to air traffic controllers the way manned aircraft pilots do, and it's equipping the drone with standard safe separation and navigation and surveillance technologies manned aircraft use -- TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) and ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast).

The second happening was the approval of landing software for UCLASS: Unmanned Carrier-launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike. The USN is very serious about RPV-drones as offensive weapons too. It's about saving money and lives. The USN is trying to reduce the sheer number of sailors required to fight a ship by automating systems wherever possible, as you may have noticed with the Zumwalt, the proposed new USN littoral frigate. Saves payroll, training costs, but also reduced human environmental concerns promotes survivability in combat.

A 7-g loading is about the limit for humans; it's debilitating, and even with training and g-suits, pilots can't take a lot and as well, the change from plus-g to minus-g loading adds to the wear-and-tear as the human circulatory system rebels. The USN is working on offensive, "killer" RPV drones that will do + 12g -12g as fast as the RPV pilot can tell it to do so, and keep doing it until it runs out of fuel.  Dog-fight hunter-killer, indeed.

Boeing and Northrop are building prototypes. The Northrop X-47B and the as-yet un-named Boeing design are the first generation of really high-performance (high sub-sonic) offensive RPV's. Northrop's software for automated carrier landings has been approved. Projected timeline is 2018, for the first carrier landings of the X-47B.

Canada has to make a choice, and make it soon, as to replacing our F-18's. My opinion is that Canada should walk away from the F-35, and buy as many Super Hornets as we need, and improved JDAM's for them. With the money thus saved, Canada should get involved in the USN RPV-drone program.

It's just my opinion, but the un-armed BAMS is ideal for our Arctic surveillance, and is available well before the end of the decade, and can even be deployed in the far Arctic. And when machinery breaks, there's no Emergency Search-and-Rescue required. As well, if money permits, the acquisition of a 2015 technology STOL transport like a Super Buffalo, maybe even designed and built in Canada would also be useful for Arctic service. The timing works well, too: we can get the Super Hornets as soon as a production block can be reserved, and before the end of the decade (2017-18), we can be doing 7-24 un-armed BAMS surveillance of our entire Arctic, and if, say, the USN goes with the X-47, buy some of those, have offensive patrols up there by 2020.

Looking into the future, sometimes greedy nations get stupid over sovereignty, so maybe the acquisition of an offensive RPV-drone might be a good way to convince the other Arctic nations and those countries that wish to be intrusive, that we really do care about our turf. And if it has to go active, well +/- 12 g's and 30mm cannon or whatever missile it launches will probably fix the problem.

Canadian involvement in the RPV-drone programs can only help our computer design industry stay with the future — this appears to be a growth industry, unlike building manned fighter aircraft. It's all about the development of Artificial Intelligence, a Super Siri, a happy HAL, a C3PO or an R2D2: it's coming, and it might be a good idea for Canada to have a part in how it comes about. But Stevie wants the F-35.

Lowers delivery costs . . .

WHILE DAVE AND BORIS and the rest of the wretches bring us the latest outrages of Stevie and his fascists, this little item is worthy of your notice: Boeing has given the JDAM 300% longer range, according to DEFENSETECH.

OK, so what's a JDAM, and why the hell should you care? It's an acronym for Joint Direct Attack Munition.

JDAMs are conversion kits for 500 lb and 2,000 lb traditional "iron" bombs, that turn them from non-guided, 'dumb' iron, to GPS/laser-guided munitions, with a 7 meter accuracy. Why do this? It saves money. A Tomahawk Cruise Missile, with a 1,000 lb warhead can cost up to somewhere around 1.5 to 2 million dollars a piece. A JDAM kit is about $20,000 and the iron bomb? Nickel-dime.

And, unlike a lot of gee-whiz super-duper hardware for the weapons fetishists, they're simple, cheap — and they work. Check out the demo with JDAMS and a B-2 at 42,000 feet, as it dumps 81, yes 81, 500 lb. JDAMS. That's 20 tons of precision guidance.



Problem was, up til now, the glide range was only about 15 miles/30 km, which means that the aircraft are within Surface-to-Air threat zones. Well, adding some simple wings now gives a 45 mile range, which means that non-stealth F-15's, F-16's, F-18's, Tornadoes and NATO MiGs and Sukhois and the like can now use JDAM and survive, launching from the edge of the SAM envelope, and bugging out before the SAM can get a lock-on.

Who's threatened? States like Syria and Iran and North Korea. They all have invested heavily in SAM's, and now it doesn't mean much.

Why should you care? Well, things could start to get somewhat more "active" in the near future, now that the cost of employing precision-guided high explosives has been so substantially reduced. In 4-5 years, non-G-8 airforces will acquire this capability. South-East Asia could explode. That's probably why the Australians are interested in the improved JDAM, according to DEFENSETECH.

For example, the Israelis could use it next year (6 months from now) to take apart the Iranian command infrastructure, to take out the SAMs, then take apart the Mad Mullah Machine — at comparative leisure, because the Iranians won't have anything to throw at the IAF from the ground or attack it in the air that will work, while the IAF lobs JDAMs onto Mossad-obtained GPS locations. The IAF stays outside the SAM envelope, and they got F-15's for anything air-to-air that is foolish enough to give it a try. All the Iranians may be effectively able to do is throw SCUDS and such at Tel Aviv, which becomes an attack on civilian populations, because the accuracy is deficient, and that might not work out so well at the UN. 

Hopefully, somebody might remember: it cost the USAF 10 or so B-52's on Linebacker II, but the USAF Wild Weasels finally took out all the Hanoi SAM sites and radar co-ordinating the most ferocious anti-aircraft network ever built, and the B-52's started the Curtis LeMay "Back to the Stone Age" campaign, and within a week, the North Vietnamese were doing a Joan Rivers: "Can we talk?" The point is: losing control of your airspace means you have lost control of your options. With Mossad carefully writing down all those target locations on GPS, the Mullahs might want to mull their options over a mulled beverage of some kind. Kinda like McDonalds: change from a $20,000 add-on. I wish they'd spend the coin on this kind of delivery system, though.

Your Monday absurdity . . .

CYRIAQUE MIGHT BE RIGHT: Your brain cannot handle Hitlar, a movie about Hitler’s evil Pakistani gangster son, but go visit io9 anyway. Life has its risks. It'll put Stevie's antics into perspective, of sorts.

Hey, Stevie . . .

SANDRA HARRIS has a few choice words and ideas to impart. Stevie ain't gonna like 'em. From Lorne at Politics and its Discontents, and Kev, at Trapped in a Whirlpool. Thank-you, gentlemen.

Perspective of the past . . .

THE WASHINGTON POST has an article you should read and ponder. It's written by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, "40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought".

(Sam) Ervin’s answer to his own question hints at the magnitude of Watergate: “To destroy, insofar as the presidential election of 1972 was concerned, the integrity of the process by which the President of the United States is nominated and elected.” Yet Watergate was far more than that. At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.

OK, so it's about Watergate. Ho-hum, old news. Why should you care? Well, Watergate was the tipping point in American politics, with the advent of planned, methodical efforts to violate the Constitution by a major political party — and as we have seen, with Stevie, the ideological lice have infected our conservatives too.

Know thy enemy: know where he comes from, know what his resources are, know what his dreams are — and never, ever under-estimate or forget that from your enemy's POV, his actions are rational. This ain't no schoolyard, or like the Talking Heads proclaimed, no disco, either, no foolin' around.

Political illiteracy . . .

The power of ignorance . . .

Truth in Advertising . . . .

Lush Cosmetics has produced a rebuttal ad to the enbridge propaganda ad running constantly on BC TV stations:



 Much more accurate than the original one, don't you think ? ? ? ?

More than students . . .

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE, and like Bob Dylan observed, a lot of folks just don't understand, but sometimes, most of the patriots are found in the gang out of uniform. Like Junius wrote, "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures."

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that while Canadians are slow to rile, Canadians don't do "submit" very well. The next election is scheduled for October 19, 2015 — 1,232 days from today, according to DaysUntil. Coincidentally, that's Mother Teresa Day, just so's ya know. With God on our side . . .

Point of view is everything . . .

Good To Know: available in non-prescription

GOTTA GET A PAIR of RIDDICKS, if only for the RIDE spot-check, or greeting the Proselytizing at the front door . Great movie, by the way, as is the first, Pitch Black.

For a future fracas . . .

HERE'S THE FIRST LOOK AT THE DDG-1000 ZUMWALT. It's a major part of the USN's answer to the Chinese navy's growth in Asian waters. It's a littoral vessel, designed for coastal patrols. Like everything these days, it's not cheap: according to the Washington Post/Associated Press, "Stealth destroyer, at over $3 billion apiece, is US Navy’s latest answer to rising China". 

A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. navy’s China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic “railguns” right out of a sci-fi movie.

But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.

At 2.4 kilometres per second (5,400 mph), the air burns, no chemical propellant used.

Right now, it's could be, would be, should be, might be. And the Chinese say they are not impressed, but then again, what else are they going to say? HOWEVER, if this is NOT speculative, it may be an indication that the USN has made solid progress with the Polywell Fusion program, which is intended to power those rail-guns. The rail-guns, with a projected 200-mile/320km range, will be appearing later in the decade — if the USN solves the power-source problem.

The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers — but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.

The costs of democracy . . .

Charles and David Koch.

THE KOCH CRITTERS are going to make this Fall's American election something really special. According to Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson, who has a report on Reader Supported News, "The Billion-Dollar Mitt Machine" that should be of concern.

Led by the billionaire Koch Brothers, forces allied with the GOP are now planning to spend a record-shattering $1 billion to put Romney in the White House.

The biggest news is that the Kochtopus - the shadowy network of political advocacy groups funded by industrialists Charles and David Koch - is alone planning to spend $395 million to defeat Obama.

One billion dollars: the Rule of the Rich. At least, that's what they believe. Maybe, just maybe, the American voter believes differently. We'll know in November. The Democrats have been expecting this, and Obama's people are doing their best to find alternatives to this bullion barrage, organizing a volunteer army. It ain't over 'til it's over.

Where misogyny rules . . .

FOREIGN POLICY has a fascinating display, worthy of your attention, of just what a raw deal women are given in various parts of the world, in an article by Valerie Hudson, "The Worst Places to Be a Woman: Mapping the places where the war on women is still being fought".

Mapped out for your edification: 1) Discrepancy in Education; 2) Inequity in Family Law/Practice; 3) Governmental Participation by Women; 4) Child Marriage for Girls: Practice and Law; 5) Maternal Mortality; 6) Women's Physical Security; 7) Polygyny; 8) Son Preference and Sex Ratios; and 9) Trafficking in Females. 

In another FP article, Mona Eltahawy asks, "Why Do They Hate Us? The real war on women is in the Middle East." Obviously, God wants it that way.

Funny Friday . . .

AMERICAN STATE LEGISLATURES are capable of amazing comedy. According to Charlie Jane Anders, at io9, the latest silliness is courtesy of North Carolina (of which someone once remarked that the state bird, the Cardinal, should be replaced by a Pontiac Firebird wrapped around a telephone pole as much more representative), "North Carolina considers outlawing accurate predictions of sea level rise".

— The Seal —

— The Firebird —

— The Cardinal —

Faced with predictions that sea levels in the coastal areas of North Carolina will rise by a meter in the next century, legislators are considering bold action: making those predictions illegal. 

In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a hesitant estimate of up to 59 centimeters of rise -but even two years later that estimate already appeared low and scientists began to expect a rise of a meter or more.

No matter in North Carolina. We've got resorts to build and we don't care what the rest of the ocean does – our sea isn't going to rise by more than 15.6 inches. Because otherwise it's against the law.

Back in 1897, in Indiana, the legislature also had a great idea, The Indiana Pi Bill, to set the value of Pi to a nice, simple number, like 3.2, but it didn't fly.