The Disaffected Lib Mk. II

  There's been some speculation that Putin's decision to invade Ukraine has little to do with Kiev and much to do with threats at home in the Kremlin. There's a pattern here whether it's invading Ukraine and seizing Crimea or helping an old reliable put down a democracy uprising in Belarus or crushing Chechnya or exchanging artillery barrages with Georgia in 2008. Every now and then Putin has to flex his muscles, sort of like the tail wagging the dog. So far the invasion hasn't gone entirely Putin's way. That could be a problem for Vlad at home. The war, it seems, is not very popular with the folks at home. There have even been mass protests resulting in hundreds of arrests.  The big setback has been Russia's flagging economy.  The already weak ruble has dropped a further 30 per cent.  Back in 2012 the ruble was worth about 25 cents, USD. Today it's less than a penny .  The central bank's lending rate has jumped to 20 per cent.  Foreign corporations ...

Flawed he may be but Mitt Romney isn't afraid of calling out his fellow Republicans. "Look, there is no place in either political party for this White nationalism or racism. It's simply wrong ... it's evil as well," Romney told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." "(Rep.) Marjorie Taylor Greene and (Rep.) Paul Gosar, I don't know them, but I'm reminded of that old line from the 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' movie where - where one character says, 'Morons, I've got morons on my team.' And I have to think anybody that would sit down with White nationalists and speak at their conference was certainly missing a few IQ points." Liz Cheney, battered by the fascists spreading through Republican ranks, called them "the Putin wing of the GOP." The comment from Romney follows criticism from Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney , a Republican, of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona fo...

With our attention glued to Ukraine and seditious truckers, this is not the best moment for something even more serious. Today, the final day of February, 2022, brings a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. You could sum it up with one question - do we want to live? Do we want a liveable future? Do we want that enough to finally do what that requires in the limited time remaining? “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, a co-chair of working group 2 of the IPCC. “Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.” There are but two options, life or death. Death irreversible and on a scale unknown in the history of this planet or life for our children and grandchildren. If we want option A, a liveable future, we'll have to work for it. A carbon tax at the gas pump is futile. There...

  It looks like we're heading for another Cold War showdown between the Russian bear and the NATO nations. This time the Arctic may be Russia's front line. The Arctic is the one region where Russia has unrivaled dominance  over both the US and China.  In recent years the Russian military has been re-activating military installations that were mothballed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  NATO, Canada and the US did not respond in kind. Russia's ability to influence Europe is iffy. The Black Sea fleet can enter the Mediterranean only so long as Turkey permits its warships to transit the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits.  In the Baltic, Russia's vital sea port, St. Petersburg, which sits at the end of the Gulf of Finland, is also vulnerable. This has led  Putin to threaten both Finland and Sweden with "military repercussions" should they seek shelter within the NATO alliance.  Even Russia's access to the Atlantic from its Barents Sea ports has to ...

  Vlad Putin's superpower psychopathy is running wild. Now he's threatening Finland and Sweden - join NATO and there'll be military repercussions. A spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry has warned that the accession of either Finland or Sweden to the defence alliance Nato would spark a serious response from Moscow. Maria Zakharova threatened if either Nordic country sought to join the security alliance it "would have serious military and political consequences that would require our country to take reciprocal steps", BBC reported quoting Russian news agencies. "We regard the Finnish government's commitment to a military non-alignment policy as an important factor in ensuring security and stability in northern Europe," spokesperson Zakharova said during a news briefing in Moscow. Meanwhile, here's a summary of the day from Pravda . UPDATE Both Finland and Sweden have responded to Putin's threats - Putin, mind your own damned business...

  Life on Earth depends on two elements, water and oxygen. Water is constantly recirculated by the hydrologic cycle . Water goes up into the atmosphere via evaporation and transpiration and it comes back down as precipitation.  When the cycle works well it's wonderful. When the cycle goes haywire it's anything but wonderful. Today, thanks to global heating, the hydrologic cycle is going haywire and faster than we had ever imagined. Rising global temperatures have shifted at least twice the amount of freshwater from warm regions towards the Earth’s poles than previously thought as the water cycle intensifies, according to new analysis. “When we learn about the water cycle, traditionally we think of it as some unchanging process which is constantly filling and refilling our dams, our lakes, and our water sources,” the study’s lead author, Dr Taimoor Sohail of the University of New South Wales, said. Sohail said the volume of extra freshwater that had already been pushed to the p...

  Not one but two heavy guns recruited by former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. for the criminal investigation into Donald Trump have resigned. Carey Dunne, the office's former general counsel, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a successful fight for Trump’s tax records. Mark Pomerantz was brought out of private practice by Vance last year to add his expertise in white collar investigations to the probe. Vance was succeeded in January by Alvin Bragg. The New York Times, citing sources, reported that Dunne and Pomerantz quit after Bragg raised doubts about pursuing a case against Trump.

  It's one of those complex issues.  Russia makes an apparent land grab in two separatist enclaves in Ukraine. Boil off all the inconvenient complexity and that's what you've got. What is playing out today is something rooted in the Berlin Wall and the reunification of East and West Germany back in the days of Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush.   The fall of East Germany (and other states of the Warsaw Pact) threatened chaos that could destabilize the superpower detente. Something had to be done. There had to be some quid pro quo . The two leaders came up with a compromise. East and West Germany would reunite. The Soviets would withdraw. East Germany would be allowed to become part of NATO.  Just one more thing. NATO would go no further east than the border of the new/old Germany. The other eastern European nations would be buffer states. They could join the EU but not NATO. Along came another Bush this time with Dick Cheney at his side. It was as though th...

  We're all feeling the pinch from the breakdown of freight transport. Goods are just not getting to market as normal. Short supply, costs and prices go up. There's a shortage of truckers to haul goods. Business Insider cites one cause - marijuana testing . Even as more states liberalize their pot laws, standards for drug testing truckers have become more stringent. Insurers don't want the guy driving that 18 wheeler toking up. According to Chris Harvey, Wells Fargo's head of equity strategy, drug screenings paired with the nature of the job — which often requires truckers to spend weeks-on-end away from home — has led many truck drivers to leave the industry. Harvey said the issue will "continue to push that price even higher," worsening a surge in transportation costs that have left consumers facing price hikes and shortages . "It's really about drug testing," Harvey said, speaking at an industry conference on Wednesday. "We've legal...

  Today marks the end of the post-Cold War world. At least that's how the editorial board of the Washington Post views Vladimir Putin's decision to recognize two disputed regions of Ukraine as independent, sending Russian forces in to back up his words. This is the way the postwar world ends, and the post-Cold War world, too: not yet with a bang, and not with anything close to a whimper, but with a rant. In an extraordinary soliloquy viewed live around the world Monday, President Vladimir Putin of Russia attacked and delegitimized not just independent Ukraine and its government but all facets of the security architecture in Europe, declaring both to be creatures of a corrupt West — headed by the United States — that are unremittingly hostile toward Russia. ...More ominous, given his subsequent dispatch of “peacekeeping” troops over the border into the regions, was Mr. Putin’s demand that “those who seized and hold power in Kyiv” cease hostilities, or else “all responsibility f...

November, 2015. A newly elected Canadian prime minister took to the floor of the Paris Climate Summit and proclaimed "Canada's back."  The climate pariah, Stephen Harper, had been vanquished. Canada would again change direction.  Yeah, right. The Paris summit was notable for the remarkable agreement that global heating must be limited to not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. We were all on the same page. In attendance was the then head of Germany's Potsdam Institute, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. A reporter asked him if the 1.5 C target was achievable. He said yes but it would require the "induced implosion" of the fossil energy giants. Governments would have to put down the oil and gas and coal giants and rapidly transition to clean energy alternatives. Some cast it as the Marshall Plan for the 21st century. Of course, nothing of the sort has happened. A new analysis suggests that the fossil fuel industries' claim to be transititioning to clean energy is gree...

One thing that still amazes me when these climate emergency events occur is how easily our resilience is overwhelmed. Next week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its long awaited sixth assessment report on adaptation, what nations must do to cope with climate breakdown now and in the near future. The title, "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" provides a pretty good idea of what's coming. Britain's largest city, its capital, is getting a crash course in vulnerability caused by its Victorian-era drainage system. There is now a significant risk of people drowning in London as the threat of major flash floods increases in the city because of climate change. According to a report by a London Councils taskforce published this month, the danger is particularly severe because there is no overall plan or authority to tackle the increasing threat of flooding in the city. In its analysis of the citywide disruption that struck last July, when torren...

Andrew Nikiforuk has always been a very credible journalist. I don't dismiss his work lightly and neither should you. His latest column, however, will trigger some of you to skepticism. It's about the supposed Freedom Convoy and the role Russia is believed to have played in it.  Read it for yourself and then tell me that this all a conspiracy theory.

Michael Harris writes that the mob that occupied Ottawa's Centretown were no more "protesters" than the mob that ransacked the Capitol on January 6th were "tourists" or "patriots." And he says the media allowed themselves to be duped, imbuing thugs with an undeserved legitimacy . The right to protest is a vital part of democracy. Everybody believes that citizens have the right to speak up lawfully against public policies they don’t support. There are a lot of places where doing that will land you in jail or worse. Thankfully, Canada is not one of them. But that is not what the occupiers in Ottawa were doing. You don’t have to look very far to confirm that. One of their stated goals was to topple the government. Another was to secure the resignation of Justin Trudeau, implying he was a Nazi. Which is to say, that they did not come with a critique and a point of view, as legitimate protesters do. They came with ugly biases, lies and an ultimatum. Get ri...

  Justin Trudeau's legacy project, a.k.a. the Trans-Mountain pipeline , a.k.a. Trudeau's Folly, was well overpriced to begin with. Now that inflated figure has swelled by another 70 per cent. It has gone from a foolish 12.6 billion to a just plain stupid 21.4 billion. The Liberals unconvincingly blame the extra 9 billion on the pandemic and last November's flooding. As if. It seems that Ottawa is now crying "uncle."  The feds just don't want to put up any more cash. Deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, said the Crown corporation will need to secure "third party funding."  With a straight face she said the government will take another stab at selling this boondoggle to the private sector this fall. The private sector wouldn't touch it at the original price but I'm sure they'll be crawling all over each other to get it for an additional 9 billion.