When it comes to America’s looming war in the Pacific, Canada’s in. That much became plain with the announcement that Harper DefMin, “Airshow” MacKay, is seeking to establish a Canadian military post in Singapore. “This entire concept — the buzzword is the pivot to the Pacific — it’s a recognition
Continue readingAuthor: The Mound of Sound
The Disaffected Lib: Afghanistan Reset
Our days babysitting Afghanistan’s unresolved civil war are drawing to a close. The big question is “what next”? What will come of Afghanistan after Western forces leave? According to Gwynne Dyer, it will probably be something close to what it was before we showed up. The “Afghan National Army” is
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Breaking a Culture of Corruption
Cops are corrupt and they don’t even try to hide it. They’re liars and cheats who don’t think twice about breaking the public trust and trampling it under their combat boots. Does this sound extreme, unfair? It’s not. The recent controversy over the Vancouver Police officer, Lee Chipperfield, who executed
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Arms Race Update – US Space Drone Returns
Drones in space? The US Air Force is preparing for the return of its automated space craft after 453-days and counting in orbit. Here it is, the X-37. The robotic X-37B, which resembles a miniature space shuttle, is due to land at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California sometime
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: More F-35 Troubles Loom
One of the ongoing controversies plaguing the F-35 has been what powers it. There was early backing for two engines to be developed but Congress angrily quashed that in favour of but one, Pratt & Whitney’s F-135 power plant. Now the P&W backers, including Senator Joe Lieberman, are up in
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Legislating Against Sea Level Rise – What Crazy People Do in Government
North Carolina is firmly Republican and its legislature is just as firmly crazy. Crazy as in detached from reality, liberated from reason, unhinged. From Scientific American: “…the meter or so of sea level rise predicted for the NC Coastal Resources Commission by a state-appointed board of scientists is extremely inconvenient
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Canada’s Age of Glum
Suddenly, Stephen Harper doesn’t seem all that out of place. The latest from pollster Nik Nanos is that many Canadians are pessimistic about the future that awaits our youth. “…the low expectations for the future are not confined to Quebec. Everywhere in the country, except for the prairies, people told
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Obama’s Mortal Sin – Normalizing Extremism
Guantanamo remains open. Drones strike far afield. American citizens are being liquidated by their own government without trial or even charge. Is this the legacy of Barack Obama, the normalization of the radical extremism of Bush-Cheney?
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Will a Vancouver Island Company Save the Buffalo?
It’s been 23-years since the last de Havilland Twin Otter rolled out of the company’s plant in Ontario. But a fine Canadian airplane isn’t that easy to kill off and they’re still coming off the production line at Viking Air of Victoria, B.C. When de Havilland stopped production on the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Former Ministers, PC & Lib, Call Harper Out
They’re challenging Stephen Harper to come clean. An open letter from four former fisheries ministers, two Tories, two Libs, demands some explanations from the Prince of Darkness about just why he’s gutting west coast fisheries protections. They specifically challenge Harper to reveal whether he’s behind this or if he’s catering
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Harper’s Environment Campaign Ad
Stop The Environment from Ed Asner
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Does Ottawa Really See Canadians as Useless?
This is directed mainly at the Conservatives but it applies to the Libs too. Tar Sands boosters, which includes most of our MPs on both sides of the floor of the Commons, routinely cite bitumen as vital to the Canadian economy. Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff referred to the Tar
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Germany Nears 50% Solar Record
Germany is going into solar power in a big way. On Friday and Saturday, the country’s new solar grid put out 22-gigawatts of electricity, the equivalent of 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity, and nearly half of the country’s electrical demand. “Never before anywhere has a country produced as much
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Income Inequality – Visible From Space
Looking down on Earth from space, it’s easy to spot where the rich people live and where the poor don’t. The picture below, published at Grist.com, illustrates the point. That’s low-income, West Oakland, at the top and high-income, Piedmont, beneath it. The rich folks get more space and an awful
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Sometimes a Video Speaks for Itself
Courtesy The Tyee.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Bean Counter Government
Andrew Coyne has discerned, finally, what the Harper government is all about – of late, anyway – the economy. The government’s agenda thus has three broad objectives: One, curb (somewhat) the growth in transfers to the elderly, whether for pensions or, via federal transfers to the provinces, for health care.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: And This is Surprising, How?
Disability claims are flooding in from surviving veterans of America’s failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Associated Press reports that about 45% of these vets have filed claims. The news has sent those for whom these wars were spectorial into some decidedly unseemly speculation as to what lies behind
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Israel’s Race Riots
To us, they’re “refugees.” To many Israeli’s, including Netnayahu, they’re “infiltrators.” In Israel’s Knesset, refugees and asylum-seekers are derided as “cancer.” Demonstrators have attacked African migrants in Tel Aviv in a protest against refugees and asylum-seekers that indicates an increasingly volatile mood in Israel over what it terms as “infiltrators”.Miri Regev,
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: An Argument Even Albertans Should Understand
Even today, simply mentioning the Trudeau-era “National Energy Programme” or NEP to an Albertan is putting a match to gasoline. Yet, in yesterday’s Edmonton Journal, the argument was made that it’s now Alberta inflicting the same injustice on British Columbia with its bitumen pipelines. “For the use of our province’s land
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Amerika Exposed
We can thank Chris Hedges and his colleagues for this. They had the guts to sue Obama and Panetta to challenge the constitutionality of the National Defence Authorization Act and, at least in the initial ruling, they beat the government. Hedges provides a look into today’s America that we should
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