Northman's Fury

John Cole on the US soldiers who hate America, and the shameless politicians who exploit them.

and Ian Welsh on The View From There.

Particularly given yesterday's post regarding Chinese quality control methods, this story has irony written all over it.

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it. - A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was scheduled to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal, effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge has played out.

Once again, the corporate bottom line, of the big corporations, not the little guys like Creekstone, trumps public safety in the food supply. I feel so much better knowing our government wants to match regulatory practices with our southern neighbours, don't you?

Say what you will about Chinese food and drug safety, but when the bad press starts being bad for business, they don't screw around.

China’s former top drug regulator was sentenced to death Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicines, as the country’s main quality control agency announced its first recall system targeting unsafe food products.

The developments are among the most dramatic steps Beijing has publicly taken to address domestic and international alarm over shoddy and unsafe Chinese goods — from pet-food ingredients and toothpaste mixed with industrial chemicals to tainted antibiotics.

Not that I'm big on the death penalty, but it beats the "Golden Parachute" guys get on this side of the ocean.

It's a pretty rare day when I can say that, but every now and again his administration actually does the right thing.

President Bush has decided to implement a plan to pressure Sudan's government into cooperating with international efforts to halt the violence in its troubled Darfur region, where his administration said almost three years ago that genocide was taking place.

. . .

The timing of today's announcement appears certain to anger U.N. diplomats, who have been reporting progress in negotiations with Bashir and have been aggressively lobbying U.S. officials to delay sanctions. Sudan's official news agency reported Saturday that Ban has agreed to travel to Khartoum to negotiate a deal on a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur.

Normally, I'm all for negotiations rather than more coercive measures and ramping up of pressure. Darfur has already been declared a genocide by the US. Even Bush would be hard pressed to make the situation worse. The government in Khartoum has been using the negotiations to stall for time while its forces continue its slaughter and displacement of millions.

Bush's hands aren't totally clean in this. The US opposition to the International Criminal Court has kept the UN from bringing up the perpetrators of the violence up on crimes against humanity charges there, and collectively everyone has been sitting on their hands for far too long while this has went on and on.

So any action against the regime in Khartoum is good news. Unfortunately as the article notes, the US already has a harsh sanctions regime in place since Clinton imposed tough measures for their support of bin Laden. It will probably take action by China to make any difference. Hopefully a way can be found to make them take that action.

Man, is there any democratic movement that the US has supported in the last six years that isn't going to hell?

Technically, I'm a live-long Montreal Canadians fan, but since they didn't do too well this year, (or decade), I've gotten into the habit of cheering for whatever Canadian teams make it to the playoffs. (It's getting to the point that this could soon include Toronto.)

Add to that the fact that I flew into Ottawa late last night to run a half-marathon tommorow, and I thought I should try and get into the spirit.

Despite some people's issues with the scheduling, I still think it would be great to see them win this year, even though I'm unfortunately not going to be in town long enough to catch any the games live.

CIA authorized to conduct covert action against Iran

A story on a secret Iranian plan to oust the US from Iraq, apparently using al Qaeda and Sunni groups being directed by the Revolutionary Guard. Groups that are attacking Iraq’s Shia population like SCIRI and the Badr brigades who were created and trained by the Revolutionary Guard.

The US complaining about the IAEA being too soft on Iran.

And word comes down today that Iran is, shockingly, not ceasing its uranium enrichment program.

Odd how these stories seem to cluster, isn’t it?

From Sic Semper Tyrannis and Pat Lang, a question about how seriously we should take the 24/7 news organizations.

Anyone who still watches such news on a regular basis should be able to form an opinion quite easily by looking at the coverage of something like Anna Nicole Smith, but the Colonel is asking about a more serious issue.

That's an M-48 tank out on a firing range. The Lebanese Army has these. This is an old tank from before the Vietnam period, but, how new do tanks have to be when used for shelling refugee camps full of civilians? The fighting around the "Nahr al-bared" camp at Tripoli, Lebanon continues.

. . .

The 24/7 news networks were hard at work today trying to make Syria responsible for the Sunni zealots in the camps. The statement was being made today that these groups were connected to AQ. No evidence was offered, but the assertion was repeatedly made based on the "possibility" that had supposedly been voiced by some nameless person in the Lebanese government. . . .

Now, think about it, folks Al-Qa'ida is a virulently anti-Shia Sunni group. Everyone "knows" that Syria supports Hizbullah, a main target of AQ displeasure. So, which is it? Which side does the Syrian government support? Does the Syrian government support both at the same time? If you believe that, then you really are a sucker for propaganda.

The comments after the article also note that the leader of the Fatah-al-Islam group that the Lebanese Army is fighting was in prison in Syria for three years and that he and many of his followers are wanted by the Syrian police and intelligence services.

Not that Syria couldn’t support more than one side in the multi-sided Lebanese political scene, but this particular group is likely quite far off their radar.

The main issue I have with the "dreaded MSM", is that you won’t even hear this questioned or get the in-depth analysis needed to make an informed judgment on the issue.

Little wonder intelligent people have such a hard time taking them seriously.

UPDATE:

From Tim F at Balloon Juice, this little snippet:

Last March, Hersh reported that American policy in the Middle East had shifted to opposing Iran, Syria, and their Shia allies at any cost, even if it meant backing hardline Sunni jihadists.

A key element of this policy shift was an agreement among Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, whereby the Saudis would covertly fund the Sunni Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon as a counterweight to the Shia Hezbollah.

Fucking brilliant.

The Washington Post has an article today that you might not want to read if you like not worrying about the food you buy. Basically, it's a run-down of just how bad the quality control of Chinese food products really is. The part I really love, however, is this bit:

Dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too.

After all, we shouldn't let the likelihood of people being poisoned interfere with corporate profit margins. That would be foolish.

The Harper government is being accused of a machiavellian plot to wreak parliamentary havoc after a secret Tory handbook on obstructing and manipulating Commons committees was leaked to the press.

Opposition parties pounced on news reports Friday about the 200-page handbook as proof that the Conservatives are to blame for the toxic atmosphere that has paralyzed Parliament this week.

. . .

The handbook reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government's agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.

. . .

Both Davies and Goodale agreed that the recent dysfunction may be part of a long term Tory strategy to persuade voters that minority Parliaments don't work, that they need to elect a majority next time.

And what a wonderful strategy it is. Deliberately muck up your own government's proceedings if things don't go totally your way and then blame it on the opposition and the fact that Canadians have a hard time trusting you with a majority as an argument for why you need that majority.

And I love the part where all the committee chairs are being asked to return their copies in an attempt to track down the leak, because the leaker probably just gave away their own copy instead of thinking to xerox it, right?

Anyway, the last point in the article did make me wonder:

Goodale predicted the ploy won't work because Canadians will realize that the Tories are the "authors of this stalemate."

Goodale said the manual also demonstrates that the government is in the grip of an "obsessive, manipulative mania," run by a prime minister who has "a kind of control fetish" in which there can't be "one comma or one sentence or one word uttered without his personal approval."

Do you really think so? I hate to say it, but even I'm having a hard time getting really worked up about parliamentary committees, particularly on a long weekend. I'm pretty sure the only way this gets brought up at work on Tuesday is if I mention it, and even then I'm betting I'll have a hard time explaining why its important.

On the other hand, it seems to me that the leaks are starting to multiply. Apparently being under the jackboots of Herr Harper is starting to grate on folks. I wonder if he can put together enough support for a majority government before his party implodes beneath him.

Could the poorly planned, incompetently managed Bush Administration FUBAR in Iraq, sold as an effort to export "liberal democracy" to the Middle East actually be part of a cunning plan to discredit the word liberal?

Ever since Stephan Dion became Liberal leader, the Conservatives have been doing everything in their power to try and undercut him by presenting themselves as a truly green governing party. The latest leak from the new Environment Minister’s office shows part of the strategy.

the documents don't reveal anything new about the government's environmental agenda, they offer a glimpse into Baird's strategy to beef up his environmental credibility. Upcoming events include a photo-op to show off the government's green fleet of vehicles on Clean Air Day, June 6,

Now as to why they might need such a strategy . . . well, that’s another story:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is poised to join President George W. Bush in scuttling or watering down any statement on climate change from the G-8 summit in Germany next month.

While European countries are pushing for their counterparts to recognize that a future climate change treaty must be designed to prevent average global temperatures from rising by more than 2 C - a dangerous threshold identified by leading climate experts - Canadian government officials, along with the Bush administration appear to be resisting.

Now, what’s that term for people who claim to be great environmental stewards while simultaneously trying to undercut any actual environmental action?

Government introduces bill to restrict immigration by foreign strippers

How low can these guys sink?

Describing the events as “the most difficult of my professional career,” Mr. Comey appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of its inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors and the role of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. Several lawmakers wanted to examine Mr. Gonzales’s actions in the N.S.A. matter, when he was White House counsel, and cited them to buttress their case that he should resign.

Mr. Comey, the former No. 2 official in the Justice Department, said the crisis began when he refused to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program, which allowed monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mail of people inside the United States who were suspected of having terrorist ties. He said he made his decision after the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, based on an extensive review, concluded that the program did not comply with the law. At the time, Mr. Comey was acting attorney general because Mr. Ashcroft had been hospitalized for emergency gall bladder surgery.

Mr. Comey would not describe the rationale for his refusal to approve the eavesdropping program, citing its classified nature. The N.S.A. program, which began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks and did not require court approval to listen in on the communications of Americans and others, provoked an outcry in Congress when it was disclosed in December 2005.

Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.

Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit, he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept the pair. They were seeking his signature because authority for the program was to expire the next day.

Mr. Comey said he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Once there, Mr. Comey said he “literally ran up the stairs.” At his request, Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft’s security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence.

Mr. Comey said he arrived first in the darkened room, in time to brief Mr. Ashcroft, who he said seemed barely conscious. Before Mr. Ashcroft became ill, Mr. Comey said the two men had talked and agreed that the program should not be renewed.

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “ I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card quickly departed, but Mr. Comey said he soon got an angry phone call from Mr. Card, demanding that he come to the White House. Mr. Comey said he replied: “After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness, and I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States.”

I read John Robb’s new book, Brave New War, over the weekend. In it, he details how his Global Guerrillas can use systems disruption to take down large opponents. Most of his examples are from Iraq and other far away places.

Today, I was reading a story showing how the phenomena could soon be applied here in Canada.

An Internet how-to video on sabotaging railway lines in support of Native land claims has drawn the attention of the RCMP and triggered investigations by the country's two main rail companies.

. . .

The video opens by referring to "more than 800" unresolved land claims, recent rail blockades by members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation and the Six Nations reclamation of a 40-hectare residential development in Caledonia.

"The Mohawks have shown the vulnerability of a major trade corridor for people and material. While few other communities could hold off a frontal assault by the OPP, there are other ways to close the rail lines," says the text heavy video as an eerie piano soundtrack plays in the background. "When justice fails, stop the rails."

. . .

Joe Bracken, president of the Canadian Heartland Training Railway in Alberta, said if the tactic is employed on a large scale, it could cause serious damage to the nation's rail industry.

"They go through hundreds of Native territories," he said.

And it appears as though the Canadian Government and military are showing their usual sensitivity to the subject.

Unbowed by federal government threats to cut funding, First Nations across the country continue to make plans for a one-day shut down of the railway system that could spread into weeks.

Relations with the federal government have soured since Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget ignored demands to make First Nations poverty a priority.

Things weren't helped this weekend after it surfaced that the Canadian military labelled the Mohawk Warrior Society and radical native groups as "insurgents" in a draft anti-guerrilla field manual obtained by Sun Media and another news organization.

Welcome to the future.

The death of Mullah Dadullah is good news on the Afghan front. Given the decentralized nature of the insurgency, it won’t be that big a blow to them.

Mullah Dadullah "will most certainly be replaced in time but the insurgency has received a serious blow" the Nato-led security assistance force (Isaf) said.

The time being basically a day. Most mature insurgent groups have back-ups-in-waiting for all their senior commanders who have been groomed to take over when the inevitable happens.

Still, given the fact that the insurgency in Afghanistan is more centrally controlled than the multiple groups in Iraq, it is likely to have at least some effect, unlike the far more heavily touted death of Zarqawi in Iraq.

Of course, other things are having a big effect on the insurgency in Afghanistan, just not in our favour.

There is growing alarm over a wave of US bombing raids in which 110 civilians have died in the past two weeks. Twenty-one people were killed last week after US special forces called in airstrikes on the town of Sangin in Helmand province. “Sometimes you wonder whose side the Americans are on,” said a British official.

. . .

“One mishandled bombing raid wipes out the benefits of months of development work,” said Matt Waldman, head of Afghanistan policy for Oxfam.

And from the New York Times

American officials say that they have been forced to use air power more intensively as they have spread their reach throughout Afghanistan, raiding Taliban strongholds that had gone untouched for six years. One senior NATO official said that “without air, we’d need hundreds of thousands of troops” in the country. They also contend that the key to reducing casualties is training more Afghan Army soldiers and police officers.

The anger is visible here in this farming village in the largely peaceful western province of Herat, where American airstrikes left 57 villagers dead, nearly half of them women and children, on April 27 and 29. Even the accounts of villagers bore little resemblance to those of NATO and American officials — and suggested just how badly things could go astray in an unfamiliar land where cultural misunderstandings quickly turn violent.

The United States military says it came under heavy fire from insurgents as it searched for a local tribal commander and weapons caches and called in airstrikes, killing 136 Taliban fighters.

But the villagers denied that any Taliban were in the area. Instead, they said, they rose up and fought the Americans themselves, after the soldiers raided several houses, arrested two men and shot dead two old men on a village road.

After burying the dead, the tribe’s elders met with their chief, Hajji Arbab Daulat Khan, and resolved to fight American forces if they returned. “If they come again, we will stand against them, and we will raise the whole area against them,” he warned. Or in the words of one foreign official in Afghanistan, the Americans went after one guerrilla commander and created a hundred more.

On Tuesday, barely 24 hours after American officials apologized publicly to President Karzai for a previous incident in which 19 civilians were shot by marines in eastern Afghanistan, reports surfaced of at least 21 civilians killed in an airstrike in Helmand Province, though residents reached by phone said the toll could be as high as 80.

Under the circumstances, the killing of Dadullah just doesn’t seem all that significant in the long-term.

A key federal cabinet committee has given the go-ahead for a plan to construct six corvette-sized Arctic patrol vessels, the Canadian Press has learned.

The cabinet priorities and planning committee approved the program to build the 100-metre-long, 6,000-tonne warships within the last 10 days, according to defence and political sources.

The patrol vessels, which are almost as large as the navy's frigates, are a step down from the armed Arctic icebreakers that the Conservatives promised in the last election campaign and will likely not be in service before 2015.

Overall, this sounds like good news. The armed icebreakers always seemed a little grandiose in any case. Still, the critical point in defending northern sovereignty is having at least one port somewhere up here that those ships can dock at.

One other point deep down in the story also caught my eye. It’s another point about priorities and resources. In this case, the existing icebreaker fleet:

Rob Huebert, a professor of strategic studies at the University of Calgary, said the corvettes are a good step, but they cannot be the only solution for the Arctic.

"It makes sense only if the coast guard is getting its icebreaking fleet recapitalized," he said.

"If this is just a cheap buyout to allow the navy not to get icebreakers, and the coast guard does not get its very old icebreakers replenished, then we're going to be in a lot of hurt."

Last year, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, who is responsible for the Coast Guard, was warned that the agency's fleet was experiencing severe "rust out" and needed to be replaced. As it stands, Coast Guard icebreakers are not due to begin being replaced until 2017.

Basically, the patrol boats are only good news if they are in addition to the regular icebreaking fleet.

Then again, given that the Conservatives are marching in lockstep with the Global Warming deniers to the south, maybe they figure they won’t be needing those icebreakers in the future.

While I don’t expect anybody who doesn’t live up north to understand this, that headline had me quite excited for a few moments until I read that it didn’t apply to my neck of the woods.

Hill said there are no plans to add more new points of entry, such as Val-d'Or for the Baffin region.

Some context: The food mail program is designed to allow us Northerners access to cheap, southern-priced, nutritious food stuffs without having to pay the high cargo prices such things would normally incur. It is a Federal program and the Federal Government has mandated that all food mail orders must come out of the community of Val-d’Or in northern Quebec.

The reason this is such a piss-off is because Val-d’Or has no flight links to the Baffin Region. All the food mail orders must be trucked to Ottawa, (and guess who pays that expense,) and then flown up to the Baffin communities. If we try to order from Ottawa, where the food is much cheaper and no long-haul trucking is required, the order is ineligible for food mail and we have to pay full freight charges.

Add to that the fact that much longer lead times required to get food from Val-d’Or to Ottawa to the Baffin Region means that the food isn’t as fresh as it could (should) be.

The whole program is so inefficient that it’s only slightly more expensive to pay the full freight costs incurred by ordering directly from Ottawa, where you can get fresher food with few restrictions on what you can order.

Classic case of why people hate the government.

After reading this, I'm seriously thinking about getting a hunting license for caribou, gardening being pretty much out of the question up here.

I’m not a very spiritual person, but I’m having a crisis of faith.

Twice a week I sit in on the FDA’s media teleconference regarding our growing food safety crisis, and twice a week I come away struck by the difference between what officials believe and what they actually know. As a born agnostic and a fan of science, I can fully appreciate the FDA’s reluctance to express absolute certainty. But as a devoted father and pet owner, I can’t help but find their reassurances less than reassuring.

First we were told that none of the adulterated wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate had made its way into the human food supply, and then we were informed that a mere 6,000 hogs had eaten feed contaminated by “salvaged” pet food. Next it was chickens. 3 million of them. Slaughtered, butchered and eaten by unsuspecting Americans.

Then 20 million more chickens, and today another 50,000 hogs… not to mention the God-knows-how-many fish in the US and Canada raised on farms now known to have received Canadian fish meal manufactured from contaminated Chinese flours.

Still… not to worry, we are told, because large manufacturers are “unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products.”

No real surprise anymore, of course.

In an emotional speech, Mr Blair said he had been prime minister for 10 years which was "long enough" for the country and himself.

I wonder how many Britons are wishing that "long enough" had come earlier, say, oh I don't know . . . pre-March 2003?

Over at D-N-I.net, Fabius Maximus has posted a series titled "What if Bin Laden were Smart", a series of 28 articles on how to wage a successful insurgency against the US.

Artcile 1: Know Your Enemy

Articles 2 though 28:

Analysis of the remaining 27 articles have been deleted by the Editors of DNI, as these insights could prove dangerous to America’s security if exploited by our enemies.

Its probably wrong, but that makes me really curious about what's in those articles.

Yesterday’s shooting of two US soldiers outside a prison in Kabul is illustrative of several problems with the strategy being employed.

First is the obvious one: The guy was apparently an Afghan soldier, which means he was one of the guys we’re supposed to be training to take over from NATO when we leave. In Iraq, the US has all but quit training Iraqis because of the not uncommon, or incorrect, belief that they are basically training their opponents. The same may be true in Afghanistan. At the least, this is going to make it far harder for US and NATO troops to trust and work closely with Afghan troops.

The second point is more subtle, but probably even more important in what it says about NATO’s presence to Afghans:

Pul-e-Charkhi is a huge prison complex built in the 1970s on the outskirts of the capital.

The vast and run-down jail is infamous for disappearances and torture during the Communist era.

It is now used to house common criminals and al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects.

Much like Bagram and Abu Ghraib, the US has a tendency to use facilities with unsavoury reputations for purposes not dissimilar from the ones the old and hated regimes used them for. Not only the prisons, but housing US troops and commanders in Saddam’s palaces in Iraq give the impression of trading one oppressor or occupier for another.

A good way to encourage resistance, don’t you think?

So one of the Tory Ministers has racked up about a $150,000 in plane rentals, which he failed to disclose as part of his travel costs, which, to me at least, falls under the, "Well, he's a politician, isn't he?" view of our elected officials.

What did catch my eye as important, was this piece:

An official from the Prime Minister's Office recently followed a journalist off Parliament Hill, then approached the reporter to challenge a story about the PMO's refusal to disclose how Harper's travelling hairdresser is being paid.

The official told the reporter three times that accountability measures are for crooks, not honest people.

It appears to be a theme in the Harper government.

That's simply untrue. Crooks will be crooks regardless what accountability measures are in place. That just forces them to be a little creative, like not claiming plane rentals the Department pays for as part of their own travel costs, maybe? As I said, these are politicians. The best we can hope for is that we keep the theivery to minimum.

But back to the accountability measures. They are there to keep honest people honest. Remove controls and oversight, and even most honest people will start to skim. Accountability controls keep the honest people from becoming dishonest, and makes it a bit easier to track down the ones who were dishonest to begin with.

Like politicians who don't think accountability measures should apply to them.

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder, using actual measurements, concluded Arctic sea ice has declined at an average rate of about 7.8 per cent a decade between 1953 and 2006.

By contrast, 18 computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored climate research group, estimated an average rate of decline of 2.5 per cent a decade over the same period, the researchers said.

. . .

The researchers said their observations indicate the retreat of summertime Arctic sea ice is about 30 years ahead of the pace projected by climate models.

Like the previous report about the ice around Baffin Island, this one isn’t too much of a surprise to me. I’ve read a large number of reports over the last couple of years saying that actual measurements are showing more rapid ice melt than expected, both here in the arctic and in the Antarctic. The International Panel on Climate Change uses the most conservative estimates, partly due to political pressure from countries like the US. That means that as bad as they say things are going to get, everything they’ve said is actually low-balling the crisis.

Anyway, given the arctic could be ice-free in as little as a 12 years, Canada really needs to start looking after the sovereignty issues up here. Slowing and reversing climate change will take a long time, even if we were to adopt really drastic measures, which we won’t. That means we have to assume we’ll have an ice-free Arctic in a very short time.

Canada needs a deep-water port and other docking facilities along with military posts to patrol and protect the waterways. There’s been talk of all these things, but so far no actions to make it happen.

The government was supposed to announce the location for the deep-water port last December. That announcement has been delayed at least twice. Basically a stall tactic for something they’re either not taking too seriously, or don’t want to do for some other reason.

Could they have picked a more Orwellian term for this?

I suppose it sounds better than “Mission Accomplished Day”