RoadDave

There’s an international meeting coming up in Canada later this month.  The Group of 8 Finance Ministers are getting together.  June 25 and 26th the G8 are hittin’ the bong in Huntsville, just north of Toronto, up in cottage country.  The Deerhurst Resort is the venue.  The Deerhurst is a beautiful place with golf, watersports and a spa.   

Unfortunately the media will not be allowed to go to the Deerhurst, as the High and Mighty G8 Bean Counters don’t want to be annoyed by the unwashed, ink-stained wretches.  Media meat will be restricted to downtown Toronto.  To keep the media vaguely sober and out of the massage parlours, our Canadian Government is putting on a Big Show. 

Down at the Canadian National Exhibition, on the shores of Lake Ontario, in the Direct Energy Centre, our Gov is putting in a fake lake, Muskoka chairs, canoes and some live trees in the media centre.  Estimated cost?  $2,000,000 to pamper the media monkeys while the G8 talks about fiscal restraint up at the Deerhurst.  The Fake Lake will be about a metre deep and cover a couple of hundred square feet. 

(I wish I was making all this up, but I’m not.  Here’s the link to more of the background on the deal, from the CBC.) 

Late in the afternoon on the 26th, the G8’ers jump into a couple of 1972-vintage Chevy Econoline Shaggin’ Waggons and cruise to downtown Toronto to party it up with 12 more G-folk at the downtown convention centre.  After the last case is empty, sometime on the 28th, they stagger out to Pearson airport, into the aircraft and bugger off home. 

Total tab for the security is estimated at $1.1 Billion.  Most of downtown Toronto is being closed with kilometers of concrete barriers being dropped into place starting yesterday. 

There is an area set aside for Official Protests.  It’s a park in downtown Toronto, not a lot bigger than your back yard.  The fences, barricades and pepper spray dispensers are already in place.  Voice-recognition technology from hidden microphones and surveillance cameras staffed by multilingual lip-readers will be searching for anyone who uses violent or offensive language.  If a mutter is found to be foul, the entire Official Protest area can be flooded with pepper spray in mere seconds.

A chain-link veal pen is set aside for those who dare carry actual protest signs.  After all a protest sign has a wooden stick in the middle and we all know what happens when protesters wave wooden sticks:  Someone could put an eye out!  The veal pen has pre-sighted sniper posts, so those stick wielding violence-crazed terrorists can be shot on site and the remains sluiced down the sewers and into Lake Ontario.

Naturally, the media is not permitted to be near the park:  The media ID hard card does not allow the media to cover anything resembling news.  Conflicting opinion is news, so the media is not allowed near the Official Protest Park for fear anything besmirches the collegial atmosphere of the G20 Summit.

Which brings up the entire question of costs.  According to the CBC, here’s some of the previous security budgets for G8 and G20 Summits.  All the events are post 9/11, so the security has been heightened to the usual irrational levels.

• September 2009 – Pittsburgh: $18 Million (G20)
• April 2009 – London: $30 Million (G20)
• October 2008 – Japan: $381 Million (G8)
• July 2005 – Gleneagles Scotland: $110 Million (G8)
• June 2010 – Huntsville and Toronto: $1.1 Billion (est.) (G8 & G20)

The numbers by comparison are so far out to whack as to be humorous, if it weren’t for the pesky problem that you and I are paying for it, directly, right out of our taxes.

Here comes the hard question:  Are we paying for the security teams from other countries and if so, why? 

There is a precedent for us paying the whole shot and it comes from the UN.

When you hear about little countries like Chad or Burkina Faso joining in on a UN police action or peacekeeping detail, one wonders how they can afford the involvement.  The quick answer is, they can’t.  Very few countries can afford the cost of having soldiers and support services, bullets, beans and beds, in theatre for more than a week at a time. 

There is the whole question of transport.  Most small countries do not have hardened transport or fighting vehicles beyond a few ancient APC’s that rarely start.  They rely on the major powers for transport, including ‘copters, LAV’s, Strykers and so on.  The US, the UK and Canada provide all the support services.  The small country puts up the uniforms, a change of underwear and some bodies to fill the boots, relying on the UN stipend to earn some needed cash and the bigger UN players to provide everything else.

We suspect that is exactly what is happening with the G8 and G20 Summits.

Conceptually, the Italian Prime Minister has a security detail of several dozen people.  Someone is paying to fly them over, including the advance team a few weeks before.  They have to be put up somewhere, fed, watered and entertained while ostensibly performing the critical advance sweeps, liaison duties with the Canadian security groups, endless meetings and the usual briefings known as Death by PowerPoint. 

In the world of common sense, the Italian government is paying for their own security detail, for their own PM, just as the US Secret Service is paying for the advance and security detail for President Obama. They would pay for the hotels, per diems, transport, phone calls home and the occasional dinner out with the lads.  This is the “pay your own way” model and is the fair and common sense methodology.

If Canada is picking up the whole tab, it could be as grotesque as paying for the flights and fuel for the various G20 heads to jet into Pearson, as well as their security details, all the meals, all the hospitality, all the entertainment and all the hotel rooms that have been booked to house nearly 3,000 participants for a day and a half of work.  Or it could be somewhere in between the other end of “pay your own way, you miscreants” where we pay for a goodly whack of the expenses for the other 19 countries to show up.

In any case, at either end of the spectrum, $1.1 Billion for the G8 G20 Summit security is almost triple what we paid for the entire Vancouver 2010 Olympics over four weeks.

Using some simple math, there are roughly 15 hours of actual G8-20 events over the four days of the meetings.  Divide 1,100,000,000.00 by 15 and you get $7,333,333.33 per hour.

That is $7.3 Million per hour for 20
of the folks to get together to read a media release that their fartcatchers have already agreed is the final communiqué.

Your tax dollars at work.

We’ve been watching the relentless coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico with a mixture of anger and fear.  Media coverage, depending on what other shiny objects have caught the editors’ eye, has been a mixture of annoyance, ferocious ignorance and the usual gotcha clips passing as reporting. 

Not being one to side with BP, at least the CEO is trying to be as clear as he can be with the media.  Sure, he’s well rehearsed and you can hear the lawyers in his head yelling “shut up!” but that is expected. 

Any media outlet that expects anything more than a well-crafted statement has obviously not done their homework.  CEO’s do not become CEO’s because they fire from the lip, so don’t expect Tony Hayward to spontaneously break down in a hail of tears and confess to a multitude of corporate sins just because he’s on TV.  Even an unguided missile like Ross Perot knew enough to clam up at the right time.  Give him 90 seconds a day to read his statement, then move on.  There’s no story.

Wall to Wall on the seabed camera:  Watching a talking head trying to explain what we’re seeing on that undersea camera is about as useful as a professional skateboarder explaining how to make cornbread:  There’s no context, no content and no explanation of what we are really seeing, because the anchor is, at best, a meat puppet.  One approximate quote will do:  “We’ve noticed the stuff spewing out of the holes is now brown and murky.  Is that the drilling mud Professor?”  Wisely, the professor in question answered “It probably is, but I don’t know where they are in the process, Rick…” 

No kidding, you don’t know.  Nobody does, as BP isn’t being particularly forthcoming with the play-by-play, so the chair warmers make it up as they go, faces flushed with this hour’s mock outrage furrowing their brows.  If the media gave a rodent’s secondary sexual characteristic about informing their viewers, they would get an actual underwater blowout preventer in the studio and give us some context of what we’re seeing. 

A lazy propsman could rig one up out of PVC pipe in an afternoon after a trip to Home Depot.  I know two guys from television days who could probably engineer a working blowout preventer valve with a stick welder, some Sched 40 pipe and a couple of blocks of styrofoam that would tell us more about what we’re seeing on screen in 30 seconds than any two weeks of makeup clad mouthpieces babbling endlessly could ever hope to explain.  Why?  Because the meat puppets have no clue what they see, how it works at even the vaguest level, or even have an appreciation of the astounding level of difficulty involved in any of the operations.  This is our source for news.

However, when the media tries, they can get some work done.  President Obama shows up on a beach in Louisiana for a walkabout and magically 400 cleanup workers appear mopping up the crude goo.  There weren’t any the day, or weeks, before, but somehow BP managed to reallocate some of their 20,000 workers grimly involved in cleaning up the Gulf, to make sure a stretch of beach is looking good. 

The telling shot was CNN’s Anderson Cooper getting the real hook:  The workers were hired the day before and told to not speak to media, or have their asses fired.  The whole workforce was bussed in from a staging area to do a dog and pony show at $12 an hour.

To simplify for the hard of thinking:  It’s Bullshiite Theatre by BP and the US Government is buying seats by the busload. 

Now is the time for someone (that would be Prez O) to grab some folks by the neck and offer them a couple of years in a Federal facility or get the damn thing fixed by Monday. 

Forty days is about thirty days too long.  Fix it.

We’ve been following the oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of weeks now, watching to see if the lights are coming on in peoples’ minds.  So far, no:  Just as dim as ever.

The reason we’re watching for signs of life is that we’re not sure people actually understand this technology and the inherent risks that come with drilling holes in the planet to suck out the hydrocarbons. 

The first risk is that the crude is almost always under a lot of pressure.  Think for a moment, you’ve got several hundreds of meters of heavy rock sitting on top of the oil deposit, as well as several hundred meters of sea water pushing down on the rock.  The crude is squeezed into layers of porous rock. 

Perhaps a mental construct is in order, with the caveat of Do Not Do This For Real. Ever. 

Consider an aerosol can of WD-40, the iconic blue, white and red spray can of lubrication goodness that you have under the sink, or in the garage.    What you’re doing at a very elemental level is drilling a hole in the side of an aerosol can of WD-40 when you drill for oil.  The scale is different, but not much more.   

You know intuitively that if you ever did try it, there would be stuff everywhere, shooting out all over the place and the little red straw would roll under the sofa.  You know you’ll get hosed from head to heel with WD-40 and if things went very badly, there is a likelihood you might even burst into flames, especially if you were near a source of ignition.  Which explains all the safety technology associated with drilling for oil on a commercial scale.

At best, oil drilling is risky, even on dry land.  At sea, be it the Gulf of Mexico, or the Hibernia field, the risk is a few orders of magnitude higher and the technology even more complex.

That a piece of technology failed is not surprising; it’s made by humans and that comes under the heading of “Shit Happens”.  We try our best and are as diligent and as wise as we can be, but there are still things that happen with technology that we can’t predict.

What is infuriating are two factoids:  One, the US Federal Government let BP punch a hole in the side of the can of WD-40 without any of the commonly used safety technology in place.  To say that the lack of action or enforcement is near-criminal is pretty close to spot-on accurate.  Plus, oil companies are limited in liability to the first $75 million only.  You get one guess as to who picks up the next $75 million in a clean-up tab?  (Hint:  It ain’t Dick Cheney) 

Second, the three fart-catchers for BP (the distributor) TransOcean (the driller) and Haliburton (the well servicing company) who spent the better part of two hours pointing at each other as the responsible party in front of a Senate committee.  The three could be re-categorized as the three monkeys of See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil. 

Yes, there will be lawsuits and yes, each one of those companies will be dragged into court at some time in the next five years, but not one of the companies said so much as a mumbled sorry for trashing a few hundred miles of the Gulf coast for generations to come.  That much oil being spilled, even with the most intense clean up possible, will be gurgling up for the next fifty years. 

That’s the nature of crude oil.  It doesn’t go away and it doesn’t mix with water unless you fill the Gulf of Mexico with balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and whisk briskly.  Add five million pounds of chopped garlic and you have a fine vinaigrette, but that won’t bring back the fishery.

Most of the European airspace is still shut down this morning, at least according to Eurocontrol the group that manages most of the European commercial airspace.  The backstory is a volcano in Iceland that has burped a huge plume of volcanic crud high up into the atmosphere.  Commercial aircraft can’t fly safely through it, so more than 70 percent of the trans-Atlantic flights are cancelled. 

Volcanic dust is almost as soft as baby powder, if you were to run your hand through a bowl of it on the ground.  The problem is commercial aircraft move fast, so even something as soft as talc, at 550 kilometers per hour, is highly abrasive.  Volcanic dust acts like a sandblaster on the aircraft in flight and gums up the inner workings of the engines, causing the potential for catastrophic failure.  Therefore, no flights:  The reasoning is sensible and sound.

What the mass flight cancellations also show us, is how interconnected we have become and how commonplace we view our global abilities to get somewhere.

Take flowers for an example.

Holland is a global clearninghouse for cut flowers.  The flowers arrive by air cargo from places like Kenya, Israel or South America from the growers, are auctioned, then shipped out, less than 24 hours later to places around the globe again by air cargo. 

With the suspension of air cargo flights, the supply chain for cut flowers is in the ditch.  Horticultural products are perishable and a three day delay in shipping means those beautiful, fresh, scented Kenyan-grown pale baby-blue sphincter begonias are now looking tired and grumpy. 

The distributor will take a look at the shipment when it arrives in Miami and reject it. It looks like crap as it has been sitting in a warehouse for three days, waiting for a flight out of Holland to North America. 

The local florist won’t have that very specific shade of baby-blue sphincter begonias for someone’s prom corsage in North Podunk. 

There will be tears and lifelong recriminations for “ruining the happiest day of my life with these crappy flowers that don’t match my prom dress that I spent weeks trying to find and get all the matching accessories and makeup so I can look like a real princess on my Prom!  I hate you!”

All because of a volcano in Iceland.

There are other stories, like people from Pakistan who are stuck in the Departures lounge in Brussels, because their flight was forced to land in Belgium, due to the volcano, but they don’t have a visa for Belgium slo they have to stay in the International Departures lounge and can’t actually leave, as they’re not allowed to enter Belgium without the right paperwork.  Nobody knows where their bags are, as they can’t unload the bags, as the flight wasn’t going to Belgium, so the bags are embargoed and the people can’t actually leave the International Departures lounge to go to the baggage carousel to get their bags so they could do something simple like, change shirts?

Eight or nine years from now you’ll see a crack hooker lurch up to your car at a stoplight.  Odds are her prom was ruined, her self-esteem destroyed and she spiraled down the ladder to the lowest societal rung possible without actually entering the legal profession.

All because of a volcano in Iceland.

American Conservative meat puppet Ann Coulter was supposed to be speaking at the University of Ottawa last night.  Unfortunately some truly loutish folks figured that it would be better to stop her speaking by protesting hard and long, to the extent that the U of O cancelled her performance.

Now, I’ll declare my bias out front:  Ann Coulter is single-note conservative mouth-breather, quite possibly a knee-jerk racist and has done her right-wing nut character long enough for it to become tedious.  As soon as you see Coulter on the tube, or scan her byline, you are driven to the Home Shopping Channel, or to go watch an AM radio.  I suppose the most positive thing that I could say about her, is that she has likely signed her Organ Donor card.

The issue is really about Freedom of Speech.  There’s a side of Freedom of Speech that we overlook.  It is the responsibility side:  Not only can you exercise your right to Freedom of Speech, but at the same time, you are obligated to let those who differ to have their say as well. 

I have no time for racists and even less time for those whose simple existence proves that Mom wouldn’t swallow, but I do respect the essential right for Ann Coulter to exercise her Freedom of Speech.  The reason is simple:  When rational people hear the vituperative bilge, poseur proclamations and brain-injured rationalizations, people will come to their own decision.  Banning her, or shutting her down means that a tiny percentage of the sane might think she’s “really telling like it is” or has some kind of insight that is being blocked by the power elite, giving her more credibility than she deserves.

That’s the conundrum of Freedom of Speech.  The obligation to let those of a contrary view have their time.  Fortunately, letting the nuts rant for a while, exposes them as those whose expostulations are a boring act that plays well with the uneducated or unthinking.

Actually, the protesters at the University of Ottawa should have protested vigorously, as they did, but at the appropriate moment, stood quiet and let her open her mouth to prove she’s a hack.  Then simply gotten up and left the hall. 

Fame pigs like Coulter are easy to shut up.  Let them speak and let others recognize how shallow and silly the act really is.  They’ll fall off the radar fast enough that we won’t have to put up with them befouling the airwaves or wasting good bandwidth with their brain farts disguised a commentary.         

Deity help us, we’re going to let Mason wrap up the Olympics.  Forgive me now.

Thanks lad fer lettin me wrap up seventeen days of Canada bein the focus of the worlds’ media for hostin the Olys. 

Fer those of you readin, what are overseas or down in the States, didja notice we don’t live in igloos?  Next time you’re up our way in the summer, don’t be askin to see the National Igloo, as she’s melted, like it does every year.  We cut out a new one every December just in time for Christmas.

Didja notice we don’t eat seal meat four times a day?  Oh and for the PETA folks what are opposed to the seal hunt, I’m wearin baby seal fur gitch right now, just like every other Canadian, so eff off.

Did ya see John Mongomery, our Luger Gold medalist walkin thru Whistler and somebody hands him a pitcher of draft beer?  You know what he did?  He takes a couple of big swigs and hands it back to the gal.  We share up here in Canada and we don’t worry about wipin’ off the rim of the jug as we know we can trust the other guy.

Didya notice we’re not always up to our arses in snow for 10 months of the year?  It was balmy, even for Vancouver and we just dodged the bullet choppering in snow for Cypress mountain.  Sometimes the weather don’t cooperate, but we’re Canadian and we figure out a way to make it work anyways.  That’s a Canadian thing in what we’re kinda good at figurin it out, even if its never been done before.

Didja see the way our folks applauded for the Yanks in the skiing, the hockey and the skating?  We don’t mind other folks winnin and we think that just being at the Olys is damn fine too.  Even if you come 47th, the fact you made’er as a competitor is just super by us.

Didja notice there wasn’t no bitchin about the officiating or the facilities?  We had some bumps, sure, but it wasn’t like other Olys where you couldn’t get near the venues, or the athletes even with your tickets like at Salt Lake City or Atlanta?

Didja notice all them blue and green coats?   Those were the Oly volunteers almost all of them Canadians who did it for free, from across Canada who were there to help the athletes, or to rescue an upsidedown bobsledder from gettin in further trouble. 

Didja notice the Mounties in the Red Serge uniforms at the flag ceremonies?  I’ll tell you right now, they don’t wear that every day.  364 days a year they look like regular cops.  Full dress reds is for special occasions only, like hoistin the winners flags at the Olys.

You might not have seen us do it, but we made sure to interview the other folks at the Olys.  Our television and radio coverage also included the lad from Ghana in the slalom and the Jamaican bobsledders too.  That’s a Canadian thing, in that we got lots of room for everyone and you’re all welcome to drop by for a pint.  I watched a bit of the American coverage and you couldn’t tell there were fifty or so other countries at the Olys.

There was a couple of things what surprised me some.  Our anthem, O Canada, what we normally mumble, got sung out loud and proud more than once and not just at the medal ceremonies either.  Then there was Joannie Rochette skatin to a Bronze a couple of days after her Mother passed.  That is what you would call real grit.

Didja notice the closing ceremonials?  We were pullin your leg for about four fifths of’er, so’s don’t take’er so serious.  We don’t have forty foot beavers roamin’ the streets downtown anymore.  Honest.  As for the table hockey players, the good ones don’t use the Bryclream as much. They look more like Sid the Kid.

When the Sochi Russkies came out, I did have me a question.  Are all the athletes going to be in bubble wrap?  That’ll make the luge safer, but she’s goin to be slow lads.  Real slow.  And you won’t hear no bodychecks into the boards at the hockey finals if they’re all wrapped up in bubble pack.  I kinda think they was pullin our legs, I hope.

By the way, you know it’s springtime.  Timmy’s doing Roll Up the Rim to Win.

So that was the Olys.  Welcome to Canada and come back soon.  We had a good time havin you here.  Safe home eh?