Category Archives: News and politics

If one can believe what our governments are up to, which is a stretch, I know, one would want our government to be forward looking, right?  Airport Security Theatre is one of those places where we get to see what our governments drink at lunch.

This article in the New Scientist, talks about a prototype European system to mount a camera in every seatback to monitor the passengers’ facial expressions for signs of potential terrorist activity.  The high concept is that those under extreme stress exhibit facial expressions that a computer can read and flag.  As well, the computer program will identify those loitering near the cockpit or running in the aisles of the aircraft, along with "other predetermined indicators that suggest a developing threat."

Consider this:  Face recognition software has been in use at sporting events, like the Salt Lake City Olympics, the World Series and the Super Bowl to identify miscreants, terrorists, left-leaning Democrats and other evildoers of the Axis of Evil Doers of Evil Axis, since 2000, give or take

Consider this: There are barely 14 citizens per each police Closed Circuit TV Camera in the United Kingdom.  The UK has a population of just over 60 million. Miami, Chicago, New York City and other large American collections of humanity have embraced the Surveillance Society mantra with equal gusto. 

Consider this:  In George Orwell’s 1984 a citizen could commit facecrime in the Two-Minutes Hate by not protesting loudly enough, therefore citizens learned to have the appropriate expression on their visages at all times.

Which leads us back to the original article in the New Scientist and cameras in aircraft seatbacks watching you for twitches, flinches or other facial quirks that may indicate your hidden terrorist agenda while flying from Luton to Antwerp.

There are three unplanned consequences of continuous airborne passenger surveillance.  First, you will find that terrorists will get their faces Botox’ed solid so they don’t betray their hidden agenda.  Look at Nicole Kidman or Joan Rivers as two examples of faces that cannot move.

Second, the Air Security folks will have hours and hours of video of celebs, the well-heeled and the famous, picking their noses, getting the gunk out from between their teeth and snoring open-mouthed on longer trips.  In the case of some passengers there will be tape of them complaining mightily about the service. then bashing their assistants over the head with a cellphone and calling the flight attendants whores, sluts and trash eaters.  This would be in the Naomi Campbell section. 

Third, if you can fit a camera, you can fit a microphone.  Not only will the Authorities have hours of you face, but every business meeting, confidential chat or rude aside with a seatmate will be heard and recorded, aside from scanning your mug for terrorist-twitches.  Muttering under you breath about the in-flight movie (Happy Gilmour) or not being properly appreciative of the level of service you are being grudgingly offered by the airline (Wow! Almost a full 4 oz cup of water!) can get your butt arrested.

So, in keeping with the logic of the Security Forces, since they can conceivably find the terrorists by watching for twitches, all terrorists will get Botoxed before a flight.  Therefore we must arrest all doctors and clinicians who provide Botox injections, as they may well be in league with the Evildoers. 

However that doesn’t mean we’re home (-land security) free.  No siree!  We’ll have to post 24 hour guards on plastic surgery clinics in case the Evildoers of the Evil Axis of Doers of Evil try rob the clinics of needles and Botox, for their nefarious ends.  Since many makeup and nail spas offer those kinds of services or referrals, then we should also be posting guards at any place that has more than two sinks or three towels, again to Help Keep Our Homeland Safe from bearded, frozen faced terrorists who are determined to climb on a flight and do their Evildoing.

I don’t like being the one to burst the bubble of pervasive surveillance, but a computer reading a face for twitches or other epheremal microtremors during a flight is not a very good way to find terrorists. 

The essential question is "How did this person get on the plane in the first place?"

Watching the citizens all the time does very little to keep us ‘safe’.  It does go a long way to controlling society however, which is probably what they really want.

Toronto is a typical big city, in that we’ve got our share of violence, gang bangers, dealers and the various nefarious who operate on the other side of the law as their career arc.  There were three shootings last night in the Greater Toronto Area last night, as an example.

Handguns have been a popular way to even things up among the criminal element, just like anywhere else.  That has the Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, on his back legs calling for the closure of handgun ranges in the Greater Toronto Area.  Miller has overlooked some information and managed to look like a dolt.  Again.

Firearms laws are Federal, not Municipal laws.  Sentencing of miscreants is most often Provincial, not Municipal laws. 

Licensing of businesses is Municipal, which is why Miller wants to suspend the business licenses of someone who dares to have, or open, or considering opening a firearms range. 

The association is clear enough to Miller:  Legal handgun owners in the GTA ‘must’ be the source of all the handguns used in the various crimes in the city, as the legal handgun owners, actually have handguns.  Therefore you can stop the criminals from having handguns by making the place where handgun owners congregate, disappear via the City Licensing Branch.

This is like banning the sale of wood in the GTA because some guns have wood on the handle or stock. 

Note to Mayor Miller:  Criminals don’t care about the niceties of a Firearms Acquisition Certificate from the Federal Government.  There have been no recorded instances of a criminal taking lessons at a gun range in how to use an illegally obtained handgun.  Most criminals couldn’t find the safety on their handguns even if it was flashing red and singing the ‘Ave Maria’.  Most criminals don’t care if they have the right ammunition for the weapon.  They just want something to wave around and feel important with.

As for handguns stolen from legal users in the GTA, there have been no reports as far as I can see, of any locally stolen handguns being used in the commission of local crimes.  What handguns are confiscated invariably are from the US and have the serial numbers defaced enough to render tracking the weapon close to impossible. 

This tells us two things that Miller can’t figure out:  Our Customs and Border folks are not stopping the flow of handguns into Canada from the United States. That would be a Federal failure, not a municipal failure.  Court sentencing, mostly Provincial, takes rare notice of the use of a gun in the commission of a crime.  That would be a Provincial and Federal failure, not a municipal failure.

So far the reality score is Municipal Failures = 0.  Which means that Mayor Miller, to be useful, should point the finger a the Feds and the Province for not doing enough to make illegal handgun possession difficult and very unappealing for the criminal element.

In November of 2006, I called for a double double law.  Essentially, if you wave a gun around while committing a crime, your sentence doubles.  Discharge the gun, and it doubles again, possession or discharge also having the effect of removing all mandatory release and parole options for the criminal.  Seven years for theft becomes 28 years very rapidly.  The guilty go away for a long time and even the most addled of criminals can understand the concept of 28 years in jail as a ‘bad thing’.

The nice part is a revised sentencing plan, like double-double, has nothing whatsoever to do with municipal governance and various mayors scoring political points off a situation they can’t do anything about.  It is all Federal and Provincial, which is where it should be.

If Mayor David Miller actually cares about the handgun violence issue in the GTA, then something like double-double sentencing is what he should be flapping his gums about, not banning gun ranges in the GTA. 

Catching up on the news…

The financial nabobs are talking about the recession, more as the ‘r-word’ rather than saying ‘recession’ out loud, as if that will keep the boogeyman at bay.  There isn’t quite a recession as best I can see, but more a beat-down on the gullible and the greedy.  Yes, foreclosures are through the roof compared to a couple of years ago and the real estate market is tanking. 

The reason is simple:  Loan companies sprang up to sell insanely inflated mortgages to No Income No Job Applicants, the NINJA loan, which was renamed the much more politic Asset-Backed Commercial Paper loan..  Everyone involved did a wink and a nod knowing the bank would end up owning the house, when the owner tossed the keys into the bank’s mail slot and walked away. 

The lenders were betting that the ever-increasing real estate boom would allow them to flip the house to cover the default and still make a ton of money re-mortgaging the property for the new value, about five times the original price.  Which might have worked if the number of defaulted and foreclosed properties was small and the market kept going up.

Funny how everyone involved collected all their fees and commission up front.  From a documentation fee, to a loan fee, to the commissions from selling the loans as a package to lenders, to the stock market betting on the viability of the loans, everyone made their money up front.  We have overlooked a small fact; that for a loan to be real, someone has to pay down the loan every 30 days. 

Rice is being hoarded and corn for tortillas is under price control in Mexico.  Two of the most common and plentiful foodstuffs on our planet are being priced out of reach.  Why?  Corn is the easy one to answer:  Greed.  Oil companies love to make ethanol from corn, as corn has lots of sugar in it.  Lots of sugar means lots of alcohol, as corn ethanol is nothing more than backwoods moonshine making, but on an industrial scale. 

The oil companies pay top dollar for corn and I can’t blame a farmer for looking at that equation and deciding to sell to Chevron or Shell, instead of the local mill or distributor.  However, there are signs that people are figuring this out.  The EU is looking at passing legislation forcing the producers of ethanol for fuel to use things that are not food, to produce ethanol. 

In a posting last year I wrote about it.  This is one where the government should step in and legislate a change.  Force the oil companies to make ethanol from cellulose sources, like wheat stalks, switchgrass, or other non-food sources.  The price difference is negligible at best and the technology for cellulostic ethanol works fine. 

If there are oil company or government slushheads out there who don’t understand what I’m saying, email me and I’ll send you the link to iogen.ca which will tell you all about it. (Disclosure:  I don’t own any stock in Iogen, or any related companies either.)

Making fuel for someone’s SUV from food is wrong on so many levels it makes your eyes hurt just thinking about it. 

As for the rice ‘shortage’, there is no shortage.  There is a lot of speculation on prices driven, as best I can see, by people who stand to make a lot of money off rapidly rising prices.  India is a net exporter of rice.  So are China and the US.  The farmers aren’t making a bucket of money and the final buyer is being priced out of the market, so someone between the farm gate at the dinner plate is getting rich.  Come on down commodities brokers world wide!

It would seem that drought in Australia’s rice-growing region (which has been going on for six years, so it’s not like it was a big surprise) has affected production levels.  With a few carefully whispered hints, stories appear that the world is going to end as rice prices are going up and the streets will be four-deep in cadavers by next Tuesday.  Yes, bad news is better news than good news, so food riots in Haiti becomes the rising price scare that has taken over the media.

Here’s the reality:  Rice takes more water to grow than wheat or millet.  Australia is in the midst of a long drought and farmers there are abandoning rice production at $240 an acre pretax profit, for wine grapes that need less water and produce a pretax profit of $2,000 an acre.  Which would you prefer to grow, as a farmer? 

The real issue is the drought in Australia.  Is it a climatic blip or a permanent condition?  Odds are it is a permanent condition due to global climate change.  This means other countries can increase their production of rice, profitably and things will settle down again.  This doesn’t make for exciting headlines ("Rice production pooched this year, Looks good for next year")  Give it a week or two for the media to forget about it and things will be fine.

Foolishness is so endemic that hardly a day goes by without some celeb, pol, or sports figure getting caught doing the dishonourable, faithless, trashy, disgusting, stupid or merely unsanitary.  AC Milan striker Ronaldo involved in an altercation with transvestite prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro hotel.  The Olympic Torch – Tibetan Monk Beating World Tour. Vladimir Putin shanking some 20 year old. Barak Obama’s preacher going off his meds.  Microsoft offering to buy Yahoo, then getting pissy when Yahoo wants more than $47.5 billion for the joint.  The US Military lowering standards further to get anyone into the Iraq war who has a trigger finger. 

Now the US Border Patrol is advertising for recruits.  Their motto?  "If you’re so fcuked up the Army won’t take you, we will.  We’re the Border Patrol!"

To quote Bella the housecat:  Wheeeeeeeee!! 

Now that we’re finally into April Showers we can catch our breath and look back, up, and out at goings on:

US Politics:  Hillary is not going to do it.  Read the entrails all you want, but Obama has the momentum to take the Democratic nomination.  This will split the Democrats into two camps that will fight like wet cats in a backpack.  Everyone involved will be scratched to ribbons.  In a moment of exceptional stupidity, Obama will choose an Eagleton-like running mate and watch his campaign implode.  McCain will run up the middle and take the Big Chair.

China:  My bet is that China will let the Olympics and Tibet play out, taking their hits with a grim face, but as soon as the Games are over, be assured that the tolerance and benign behaviour we see now, will come to a screeching halt.  Western companies have been greed-handing their way into business with China since Nixon opened the doors and China has welcomed their dealing.  Now China has them by the attachments.  Imagine if the Central Planning Council of China decided not to work with Wal-Mart any more:  The stores would be empty in a month and about 11 percent of the US would be out of a job. 

Economy:  Everything we eat, wear, live in, watch, drink or roll on top of uses oil.  China and India are paying top dollar for oil.  Oil companies sell oil where they get top dollar.  Get used to very expensive gasoline as it isn’t going to get better.  Meanwhile, the CEO’s make record levels of compensation and bonuses while their companies post record losses.  This is entirely upside down, much like the first dot.com bust, where people were getting millions in venture capital because they could register a domain name that sounded cool. 

In some towns the biggest employer is Wal-Mart.  This means you have a bunch of people working in the service industry whose sole contribution to the economy is to go to Pizza Hut once a week.  Nobody actually makes anything, they just service sector each other, the server at Pizza Hut saving their tips to go to Wal-Mart to buy something once a week, to be served by the same people who gave them the tips that allows them to buy a clock radio that was made by someone in Taiwan.  This is not a viable economic model.

Society:  We’re so accustomed to having no power that the surveillance society is only going to become more pervasive in the name of ‘security’.  This might let off a bit when President Jo-Jo The Idiot Boy leaves office, but big business knows that government paranoia is a great source of revenue.  You could almost predict that Homeland Security would be privatized to KBR:  Most of the Iraq war support functions already are.

The police using military surveillance drones to keep tabs on us is already underway in Miami with other cities looking longingly at the remote sensing capabilities the military uses, but turned domestically.  Mikey Chertoff is leading that one.  After all, you’re not a terrorist are you?

However, despite it all, people still go about their lives, occasionally doing nice things for each other.  Bits and pieces of common sense sneak under the radar of the lawmakers.  For example, the landlord posse has permitted a conglomerate of food banks to canvass their high rise buildings for donations.  They generated something near two truck loads for local food banks, which is good for the food banks.

Despite all the mean and greedy behaviours out there, people are still being somewhat civil to each other and the general society we live in.  We might not be able to control much, but we can steer how we interact with others. 

At least until the authorities make it illegal.

In a moment of exceptional candour, New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer admitted to calling in the professionals in the handrail waxing business.  The episode set him back $4,300, plus his career.

Of course he’s apologized to his wife, neighbours, the state of New York, the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, the Police, and the guy on 42nd street who talks to his invisible friends.  Very nice of him to humiliate his wife in public, by the way.

The screeching hypocrisy is that Eliot Spitzer had a reputation for being a law and order, go after the big guys kind of Attorney General.  That’s the part that galls the most:  The hypocrisy.

The incomprehensible, in all the sordid sex scandals involving politicians since the dawn of time, is this:  Can’t you just keep it in your pants?  Yes, I know that men are ruled by testosterone, the Little Head ruling the Big Head argument, but it actually goes deeper than that.  What the real intoxicant is not sex, but power.

Power, said Hank Kissinger, is the ultimate aphrodisiac and power does truly warp people even more than testosterone.  Some wiser observers than I have determined that the majority of difficulties on the planet come from those with power being grimly determined not to share it, as well as being oriented to using their power flagrantly to demonstrate that they have power and can wield it.

War, for example, is just a power dynamic taken to an extreme.  However, closer to home, things like racism are also power dynamic issues:  The outsiders want some and the insiders don’t want to give up any.  The boss has plenty but won’t let you do the work the right way, in order to demonstrate his power over you.  The schoolyard bully knows that he can scare the crap out of you, by making you feel like you have no power, so you give him your lunch money in exchange for not getting beaten. 

To carry the argument further, Eliot Spitzer (or any other pol caught dipping his wick) knows that he has all kinds of power and is so besotted by it, he feels he can ignore the rules the rest of us work under.  Even bolder, he thinks that if caught up to the bristles in a giraffe, he can make the news media shut up about it. 

This presumption has been proven wrong so many times (the media won’t shut up about it) that one would figure politicians would eventually learn the lesson.  Even toddlers understand ‘red element on stove means pain’ after one test of the lesson, and usually the toddler will stay away from a hot element on a stove.  Empirically, this tells me that politicians are dumber than toddlers.

Again, empirically, this demonstrates that power is even more of a common-sense killer than testosterone.  In the grips of a testosterone flood, a male with a raging circus tent can play one-handed Spit in the Carpet with Ms Thumb and her Four Fabulous Friends to get over it. 

Someone in the grips of a Power Flood can’t actually do anything to to get over it.

Here’s the hook:  We give these clowns the power over us.  We willingly submit to their posturing and posing during elections and mark our ballots.  In other parts of life, we do the same thing.  We let people exercise power over us and we feel miserable about it.  Why do we have to feel that way?  The answer is we don’t have to feel miserable about it.

Yes, there has to be rules and there has to be sanctions when the rules aren’t followed.  Without rules we would have loons driving 190 kph down the wrong lane of the highway, drunk, wearing a pair of granny panties on their head and singing "Mambo Number Five" at the top of their lungs, in a Porsche. 

Rules I don’t mind, as the common-sense ones keep dumb humans from being truly dumb and often protect us from our own dumbness.  But rules designed to demonstrate power without any benefit to the rest of us, are simply stupid.

Which brings us back to Eliot Spitzer, or any of the other recent crop of wick dippers, toe tappers, goat ropers and reality stylists.  If you want to climb up on the mountain top of being a paragon of virtue, be prepared to act as a paragon of virtue, in everything you do.  Until then, perhaps you should just shut the hell up and keep it in your pants.          

There hasn’t been much action on Road-Dave in the past two weeks, as there has been some deadlines on the work side of life that have required all the brain cycles available. 

Suffice to say, the Democrats are doing their thing with Obama and Hilary running close enough to give pollsters fits. 

The Republicans have anointed John McCain. Willard (Mitt) Romney is going to go back to whatever it is he used to do.  

The US Government has passed laws allowing the use of spy satellites domestically and absolving US Telcos and network carriers of any responsibility for the warrant-less wiretapping of email, surfing habits, downloads and phone calls of citizens.

The EU is insisting on fingerprints for all visitors, just like the US, while Canada works the worry-beads over our troops in Afghanistan and the potential for a federal election this spring.

Meanwhile, we’re getting snowed upon, again; Toronto catching the wrath of global climate change, with more snow in the past two weeks than has fallen in the past two years.  Side streets and sidewalks are essentially glaciers that won’t disappear until April, when we’ll find wooly mammoths and postal carriers frozen in place.

The Writers Guild has cut a deal with producers, so the production can begin again on vapid shows with laugh tracks and as much innovation as taking a piss left-handed can bring you.

And a beagle has been chosen as the grand champion of the Westiminster Dog Show.  He’s cute, in a beagle way.

This must be February.  It too shall pass.

In a posting a few weeks ago, we detailed some of the issues with a Canadian medical isotope reactor in Chalk River that had been shut down for maintenance, leading to a shortage of medical isotopes worldwide.

Two weeks ago the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Linda Keen, got handed her head in a bag and was fired from her job as the chief of the nuclear safety watchdog agency.  Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn was the source of Linda Keen’s firing, the evening before she was scheduled to testify before a House of Commons committee about the reactor shut down.

In testimony yesterday, Keen identified that the National Reactor Universal (NRU) had been running without backup power for key systems for 17 months, exposing the public to undue risk of a catastrophic failure of the reactor.  Downside to keeping the NRU cold, was a shortage of medical isotopes, worldwide.

The Government lined up on the side of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), who make money producing the isotopes, in a reactor that AECL owns and is supposed to operate safely.  Since Linda Keen and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was insisting AECL operate the reactor safely in accordance with the law, they were getting in the way of revenue. 

Ergo, Parliament passed temporary legislation telling the CNSC to piss off and then Gary Lunn fired Linda Keen for showing "a lack of leadership":  NRU went hot a few days later, providing medical isotopes again.  According to CTV, the backup power and pumps are now installed.

In the world of electrical appliances, as an example, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) says that there are standards regarding how appliances are wired, flammability, durability and safety.  Standards, like CSA, or Underwriters Laboratory in the US, mean you can buy an electric can opener and be certain you won’t get electrocuted, and the can opener won’t run amok slicing open your fridge if a switch fails. 

The manufacturer of the electric can opener has to build it to a standard to be allowed to sell it.  The standard means the manufacturer has to put in ‘expensive’ components, like safe electrical connections and provide documentation that the design is safe.  CSA then tests samples and, if all is good, issues a CSA number for the can opener.  As a consumer then, you can buy it and be reasonably certain that the electric can opener is safe to use for its intended purpose.

Ideally, a standards and safety organization, like CSA, TUV, UL and so on, operate in a friendly adversary atmosphere with the manufacturers.  The manufacturers may grumble about having to prove safety, but they also know that enforced safety standards mean good products and less likelihood of the manufacturer being sued.  The manufacturer also knows that without the CSA tag, they cannot sell their product legally.    

Here’s the disconnect:  The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is charged with making sure that reactors run safely, to the standards agreed to, in keeping with their mandate and legislation.  Atomic Energy of Canada Limited knows the standards and rules, as they helped write most of them. 

AECL decided to not follow the rules and the CNSC did what they are supposed to do:  Stop the operation of a potentially unsafe reactor.  For doing her job, Linda Keen got fired.  The smokescreen put up by the government was that lives were being put in jeopardy because of the shortage of medical isotopes. 

Which begs the question, what about the citizens of Chalk River, Deep River, Petawawa, Pembroke, Renfrew, Arnprior and Ottawa, being put at risk of the NRU going bad because of the safety equipment not being in place?  There’s only a million or so citizens in range. 

If the unthinkable had happened, Linda Keen would have her head handed to her on a platter because she didn’t insist on shutting down NRU for safety violations.  Presumably, Gary Lunn would have fired her for not showing leadership again. 

Funny how nobody is questioning the wisdom of AECL running their reactor without the needed equipment in place.  Yes, the folks at AECL know how to run reactors safely enough, but the idea of a standards organization acting as the watchdog, is to have sober second thought and review of things. 

Linda Keen did what she was supposed to do and got fired for it.

If you’ve got a opening for a senior executive in your company, you’d be well-served by someone like Linda Keen, who actually does the things she is supposed to do, instead of some meat-puppet like Gary Lunn who punishes the innocent.

Benazir Bhutto is dead:  That’s a fact, Jack.  The rest is of the story is like the inside of Stephen Harper’s brain:  Cloudy, confused and cold. 

The latest version of reality is that she hit her head on the handle of the sun roof of the SUV she was standing up in.  Not a suicide bomber, or the gunshots, just an unfortunate bump on the head and that’s the end of the story, everybody go home. 

That’s like saying JFK died from heart failure.  Technically, it is true, in that JFK’s heart did fail, as there was nothing to pump against:  He was short a few litres of blood from a dinner-plate sized gunshot wound to the back of his head.  ("No, no no, it was heart failure that killed him.  We don’t need the Warren Commission…")   

The latest smokescreen, aside from the "Single Bump On The Head" theory, is that al-Qaeda and the Taliban ordered Bhutto’s execution.  The bullets that didn’t hit her had the Arab text for "God is Great" inscribed on the tips, so everyone would know it was a religious killing, not a political killing. 

Look at the recipe.  There are leftovers of colonial rule, partition from India, predominance of the military caste and a slick coating of religious intolerance to bind it all together. 

Mix in two teaspoons of baking powder, a porous border with Afghanistan, the CIA supporting the current dictator, nuclear weapons aimed at India and an economy that wobbles like a one-legged wallpaper hanger. 

You get something indescribable and inedible.  You can’t ignore it for fear it blows up; it just sits on the countertop, with little burned bits sticking out all over and steam issuing from the crust.  It’s not pizza, that’s for sure.

In a previous post we took a run at the background to Pakistan’s political history trying to make sense of it all.  As much us Western folks would like to see some mythical Jeffersonian Democracy in all the countries of the world, having been fed that high-powered cough syrup for generations, it isn’t going to happen.

Was Benazir Bhutto the last great hope for Democracy in Pakistan?  Not in this world.  Her father was about as corrupt as Musharraf, until he was deposed in a military coup and executed for various high crimes and misdemeanours.  Benazir Bhutto’s two runs at governing Pakistan showed the same level of power hungry insanity and systematic corruption that anyone else showed in the same office.   

Which brings us back to Musharraf.  He’s a dictator who has promised general elections after declaring emergency rule, tossing most of the lawyers in jail and beating the crap out of any judges who dared defy his ways.  Done correctly, now that Benazir Bhutto is gone, Pervez Musharraf will hold elections, win all the votes and declare emergency rule again, as the Bhutto supporters will riot in the streets to protest the results of the election.

Naturally, the Pakistani Military will feel threatened by all this activity and declare martial law over and above the emergency rule of Musharraf.  There will be a bloodless coup whereby Mr. Pervez Musharraf is deposed by the military and replaced with, (wait for it), General Pervez Musharraf, back in uniform again.

The CIA of course, is very quiet on all this.  Musharraf is beholden to the CIA and President JoJo The Idiot Boy.  "He might be a beast, but he’s our beast." would seem to be Washington’s take on it.  The same attitude prevailed under US Presidents regarding Panama, Argentina, Viet Nam, Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq and Iran at various times.  As long as the person in the big chair is playing along, they don’t get involved.

Which leaves us exactly where?  Almost exactly in the same place we started from.  No democracy in Pakistan, a corrupt government and half the population angered at being shut out of the money and power.  Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year old son may take up the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party, and with any luck, he’ll make it to his 20th birthday without hitting his head on the sunroof.

If he can hang out for two years, he might actually be able to vote for Musharraf in the elections in 2010.  We know he won’t be able to vote for his own party. 

We seem to have intercepted some of the replies Santa has sent to various people.  One could only imagine what the original letters asked for.

Dear Brittney:  No, you cannot ask for Kevin to die and his lawyers to get diseases.  You’re getting a tubal ligation for Christmas instead.

Dear Mitt:  I will try, but Santa cannot promise that Beelzebub will issue forth from the Underworld consuming Rudy and Mike in streams of fire and brimstone in the Iowa primaries. 

Dear Vice-President Cheney:  You’re getting coal, not a war in Iran.  I still remember the water-boarding your people gave Blitzen last December.  You are a sick little man if you think putting the arm on my reindeer is going to get you moved off the naughty list. 

Dear Al Gore:  I appreciate you wanting to provide carbon offsets for the reindeer, but we’ve been carbon neutral and environmentally friendly for years.  Perhaps you should take the carbon offset yourself and stop taking private jets.

Dear Bill:  I know you mean well, but we’re sending the 16 million copies of Vista back to Redmond, as the good little boys and girls want iPods and cellphones, not laptops this year.  If you could though, swap the copies of Vista for Halo III, we could work on it for you.

Dear Hillary:  Santa will try, but he cannot promise that Barak Obama will suddenly start to stutter and speak in tongues.

Dear Barak:  That’s very naughty of you to wish spontaneous orgasms for Hillary during speeches, but it would soften her image a bit.  I will bring you the xBox though.

Dear Lord Black of Cross Harbor:  Your missive of December 18th to hand.  Although modest in your requests and within the usual limitations of the position of Santa Claus, per Para 2 (a) 1.2 of the Shareholder Agreement, herewith called The Agreement  it is the judgement of the Board that you are not permitted to purchase, obtain, or cause to influence by any means, the proxies of any Elves currently in the employ of North Pole Enterprises, 2002, Incorporated in Delaware.  And, no, there are no conjugal visits at the prison you’re going to.

Dear James Cameron:  I don’t care if you’re an Academy Award Winning director, you are not going to follow me around on Christmas Eve with that friggin’ IMAX camera while I do the rounds.  Especially if you get Celine Dion to sing the theme song.  No Way.  No How.

Dear Michael:  No, you cannot have a young boy for Christmas.  But I will bring carrots for the llama and a banana for Bubbles.

Dear Simon:  I don’t know if Santa can do it, but he will try to bring you some more skills aside from your talent of being the biggest asshat on American Idol.

Dear Amy Winehouse:  I can bring you more designs for tattoos like last year, of course, but Santa would prefer it if you didn’t leave a pipe and some rocks for the reindeer, like last year.

Dear Writer’s Guild West:  Santa doesn’t normally get involved in labour issues, but even if you’re right, it is wrong to ask for the studio heads to all get boils on their bottoms for Christmas.

Dear Queen Elizabeth:  Of course, Santa would be most pleased to bring you the box of After Eight mints for Christmas.  Will you be leaving the customary glass of gin for Santa?  With warmest regards, Santa.

Dear Posh Spice:  Certainly Santa will try to bring peace to the world, but what he would prefer is that Becks stops getting injured and actually plays footy next season, instead of sitting on the sidelines.  Santa lost a bundle this year.

Dear Elves:  As part of our efforts to rationalize our international supply chain and increase shareholder value, as of 2359 hours on December 24, 2007, all shifts at the North Pole will go on indefinite layoff. 

We do not anticipate reopening the line at the North Pole, but will call back a limited number of Elves, based on seniority, to disassemble the North Pole Lines #1 #2 and #3.  These lines will be transported to the North Pole Enterprises (Honduras) facility in keeping with our global vision of Gifts for Good Girls and Boys, with Value, Quality and Integrity as our mission statement.

We thank you for your many years of service for North Pole Enterprises and wish you well in your future endeavours.

With Warmest Regards

S. Claus 

Approximately 60% of the World’s medical isotopes are produced at a little town a three-hour drive northwest from Ottawa.  Chalk River, Ontario is the site of a nuclear facility that has been operating since 1944.  Yes, Canada has a big finger in the nuclear pie and has for quite a while. 

The National Research Council (NRC) has been involved in the nuclear business since 1942 when a British and Canadian collaboration saw a lab opened in Montreal.  Not talked about is the role the NRC played in what was called the Tube Alloys project, the codename for developing a nuclear weapon by Britain.  Tube Alloys research was apparently rolled into the black box of secrets the Brits brought to the US as part of the Lend-Lease agreement and eventually became the Manhattan Project.  We’ll never know, but it is a tantalizing secret.

National Research Universal (NRU) is a nuclear reactor at Chalk River that has been running since 1947.  Cobalt-60 radiation was found to kill cancer cells when aimed at specific areas and was one of the first medical uses of nuclear radiation to cure, rather than kill people. 

It could be argued that the entire nuclear medicine industry was created by AECL, providing the isotopes that make diagnosis possible using radioactive trace elements like Cobalt-60, Moly-99, Xenon-133, Iodine-125 and Iodine-133 for medical imaging. 

The problem is, these elements have a shelf life, sometimes measured in hours, not even days.  Hospitals that use the products can’t keep a stock of some isotopes and rely on regular deliveries from MDS Nordion, the private company that sells the output of the NRU.

The problem is, NRU is down.  It was to be shut down for a couple of weeks for regular maintenance, but other things have cropped up that have kept NRU offline.  This is not particularly surprising, as it is a 50 year old machine, that even with the best maintenance, will get cantankerous once in a while.  Safety issues are another thing, beyond a machine being grumpy, speaking to the overall safety of NRU.

Chalk River has had its’ share of meltdowns:  In the early days the technology wasn’t understood that well and as a consequence two reactors at Chalk have gone ‘foom!’ over the years.  In one notable incident, Jimmy Carter, (yes, that Jimmy Carter) was at Chalk in 1952 when the NRX went bad and melted a section of its core, spilling coolant all over the place. 

The military from CFB Petawawa were called to provide some folks to help clean up:  They were given boots, mops and a dosimeter to swab up several hundred gallons of radioactive coolant that had splooged all over the floor of the NRX building.  Even the NRU has had heartburn, in 1958 when there was a fuel rupture and fire.  

The current NRU problem is this:  Coolant pumps that provide heavy-water coolant to the reactor are powered by the regular grid of electricity, not by a dedicated, uninterruptible power source.  If the regular power grid goes down, like in an ice storm, the coolant pumps don’t have electricity to pump coolant into the reactor.  If this strikes you as scorchingly dumb, you’re not alone. 

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) the group that oversees reactor safety in Canada, wants Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited (AECL), the folks who run NRU to fix that problem right smartly before they can start banging electrons together again.  There are other problems with NRU, but the coolant supply is the real show-stopper.

To that end, our Prime Minister Stephen "Steve" Harper has, with the assistance of all parties, bulled legislation through to pull the CNSC authority for 120 days. 

AECL gets to run without plates and insurance and the government has said "Git’er done lads!" to produce the needed isotopes.

It would be prudent at this point to remind our brilliant legislators that Chalk River is a three-hour drive North-West of Ottawa on Highway 17, the Trans-Canada highway.  Prevailing winds in Ottawa are from the North-West and the Ottawa River, the body of water that supplies Chalk River, goes right by the back door of Parliament Hill, about 200 meters from the House of Commons.  

Further downstream, 24 Sussex Drive, the PM’s residence, is perhaps 500 meters from the Ottawa River.

If the lab-coat brigade at Chalk don’t have their math right, Ottawa will find out a couple of hours after the fact.  Hey, it’s only a urban area of 900,000 people.