Way Out There

That’s where our future lies.

Way the hell out there… beyond the moon… and beyond even Mars.

If you haven’t been paying attention to all the noise being stirred up by the global scientific community – specifically cosmologists and those fields relating to astronomy – and watching all the pleading videos on YouTube from the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, we Earthlings on this blue marble that circles the sun every 365 days are driving our species into the ground because we can’t be bothered to spend tax dollars on endeavors that will eventually lead us away from our home planet.

Every year, this situation gets more dire – especially in these lean years where governments have had to drastically slash their budgets.

You’ve heard of NASA, right?

Yeah, yeah… they were in that movie about the asteroid – they supposedly had a bunch of people just sitting around dreaming shit up!

Well… in reality, I’m sure there are a bunch of people at NASA whose job is to “dream shit up”, but the American agency’s main job has been – since the late 1950s – to further humanity’s understanding of the cosmos by sending humans and robotic probes out into the big black yonder.

In the beginning, there were the Mercury and Gemini rocket programs that put Americans into space after playing laggards to the Commie bastards in the USSR.

And then there was the Apollo program… the one NASA program that has accomplished a feat so complex and daring that nobody has been able to duplicate in 40+ years since: putting a living human being onto the surface of the moon.

Before any of you conspiracy wingnuts try and set the comment section ablaze down below with your lunacy (see what I did there?), be of the understanding that all comments have to approved by me – and not one word of how you think the lunar landings were faked will ever see the light of day on this blog.

Why am I so certain that NASA put Neil Armstrong and the astronauts that followed him onto the moon’s vast plains of regolith?

For one single reason: the Red Soviets never said that the Americans were fibbing.

Why would the Kremlin stand by and let the U.S. of A. boast about landing on the moon if it actually hadn’t happened? Especially when that kind of press made the Soviet space program – which was National Priority #1 during the 1960s – look like a total and utter failure?

It would have been in Moscow’s best interest to dispute the American’s claims if they had definitive proof that NASA was actually filming the moon footage on a soundstage somewhere – but the only thing that came down the wire from the Soviets was a begrudging congratulation.

What made them privy to the actuality of the Apollo capsules heading to the moon? (And no… they weren’t paid off as some nuts insist).

The Russians had deep space tracking facilities just as powerful as the Americans… radar facilities that could track anything in Earth orbit or beyond – all the way to the moon and past it

So, as the Apollo missions unfolded, the Soviets watched with detached fascination on their radar tracking scopes – probably cursing aloud and hoping that each trip to the moon would go horribly wrong so that they could (politely and in political terms) laugh at the American’s bungling of something that they could then claim was easy and that they were going to successfully carry out via their superior scientific apparatus.

But, like I wrote up above, that didn’t happen – and the Commies were forced to eat crow, quickly killing their own moon landing program before it had even gotten off the ground.

So, yeah… humans have walked on the moon… drove around on the moon… played golf on the moon… and looked at porn while on the moon.

If you need more proof, check out the Mythbusters episode regarding the so-called Moon Hoax: Adam and Jamie thoroughly debunked all the most popular “theories”.

Okay… I’m gonna get this blog entry back on track.

Like I was saying before I went off on the wingnuts, space exploration – and human space exploration specifically – has gone off the rails almost globally due to the lack of political will to spend big money on things Joe Public had begun to take for granted.

The average person out there – who hasn’t studied the various doings of NASA, the ESA, JAXA, and other space agencies around the world in any depth beyond the 20 second blurbs on the nightly news when a space shuttle launched – kinda assumes that human space flight is routine, fairly easy, and is already half-way to Mars.

Sorry, space cadets: humans have been stuck in low Earth orbit for the past fortyish years since the Apollo program concluded – the farthest we’ve gone off the face of the planet is to service the Hubble Space Telescope…  570 kilometers straight up, or 350 miles for our Imperial measurement friends.

The moon is  385,000 kilometers away.

In the waning years of his presidency, George W. Bush tried to build himself a legacy by commanding NASA to start planning for humankind’s return to the moon before foraging outwards to Mars – something that the American people could surely get behind in the way that they embraced John F. Kennedy’s vision of man going to the moon for the first time.

However, elections came to America.

At first glance, Barrack Obama was good for NASA since he was science-friendly… and maybe Bush’s Orion/Constellation program would have maintained forward momentum if a class of representatives hadn’t been elected to Congress that were more interested in nickel and diming important federal prorgams in order to service that 1% the Occupy movement loves to hate.

Unfortunately, NASA’s budget kept getting scaled back in the years that followed Dubya’s departure (and even while he was still Commander In Chief)… cut down so much that Obama was forced to take a scalpel to the American space program – paring away costly items that Congress just refused to pay for.

The costliest of these items being human space flight beyond Earth orbit – whether that be to the moon or to Mars.

On paper, not all is lost: Obama has endorsed sending humans to an asteroid or a Martian moon by the year 2030… by which time the Chinese Commies will have set up a permanent base on our own moon.

You see, only the Chinese are taking human space flight seriously in the here and now - aggressively pursuing space flight at a rate of speed that would almost put the 60s space race to shame.

Of course, the Chinese have more money than they know what to do with – we buy nearly all of our consumer goods from them, after all.

I suppose it also has to do with the fact that they don’t spend a dime on basic human needs – but I digress.

So, on top of building entire metropolitan cities from scratch for people who won’t move to them, Beijing has spent billions of yuan on building rockets, space capsules, and other space-related infrastructure that will put them on the moon within the next decade.

You might be saying “So what? What does that have to do with me?”

I’ll tell you what: humankind needs a new home… and that home will be out there – first amongst the planets in our own solar system, and then out among the stars you gaze at every night.

This isn’t some panicky prediction based on environmental concerns (though our rapid depletion of natural resources here on Earth is certainly making a good case for it) but simply based on the fact that Earth will eventually run out of space for our massive populations.

If we – as a species – want to continue growing our masses without check, then we are going to need new places to put our children/grandchildren/great grandchildren/etc. so that they can thrive in environments capable of supporting them.

…And we can’t allow the Communist Chinese to control that stellar high ground – not when the individual human lives under their control mean so little.

The last thing we need is abysmal-pay sweatshops on the moon.

No.

Just no.

We need to band together as a species on united human space exploration front so that all of the ground that humankind can travel to will be open and fair to all.

I know that may sound like a rehashed speech from a Star Trek episode, but it’s true: when humankind’s destiny is clearly out into the cosmos, we all need to get behind that destiny to make it happen.

We need to speak up and force the people we elect to office to spend tax dollars that will help us into the future… instead of spending money on the same old crap that we’ve done for a 100 years or more: big business and a military to pursue the interests of big business.

Big business is only interested in pacifying the masses with goods and services… and the military’s only interest is in how to kill the masses.

Those two things do nothing to preserve our species – a species that has barely existed for a million years… which is inconsequential when taken in context with the actual age of Planet Earth.

We will certainly be our own undoing if we don’t get ourselves off this planet – not all of us, of course… but a number that will ensure our survival in case something untoward should happen to our homeworld (cataclysm, environmental collapse, alien invasion, etc.).

The only way we will do this is by spending money on human space flight… no matter how small in scale it may seem at first.

The  313,286,000 people who live in the United States Of America (minus the native population) didn’t all arrive on the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria with Christopher Columbus – they got here by being the children of those who immigrated to North America in the years after Columbus “discovered” the New World – an expedition of discovery that was paid for with money from Spain’s tax coffers.

Exploration on a grand scale is done by nations (and currently with the help of private companies).

Those nations now need to spend the money necessary to send our species way out there.

It’s our only real chance to make sure our species… well… lives long and prospers.

Preoccupied With The Occupation Of Occupy Wall Street

Let me say this first: the Occupy movement has already failed.

In the first handful of days at the Occupy Wall Street event, there was something interesting going on – there was a hopefulness that a message could be made loud enough to catch the much-derided 1%’s attention at the top of the capital food chain.

It seemed like a situation that could spark to a sort of Arab Spring uprising that would force changes.

But… the message was quickly lost as everyone (and their dog) who had ever had a grievance with the system of capitalism showed up with a cardboard sign.

Immediately, the movement became a hodgepodge… a cohesive mess of the needy that lacked any sort of focus.

Just as quickly as the Occupy movement spread to other cities, this terminal protest disease spread out to the new locations… and nobody seemed to notice or was willing to do what was necessary to heal the organized group organism.

Instead of a single, collective voice calling on the rich to change their ways, the Occupy movement mutated into something that required not just the ears of bankers and investment brokers, but the attention of every sort of executive that had ever been in contact with money: bankers, investors, insurance agents, HMOs, Hollywood types, retirement fund operators, school board trustees, mayors, execs at restaurant chains, dental surgeons, toy makers, taxi operators, and the list goes on almost indefinitely.

In a few quick and easy steps, the Occupy movement had gone from relevant (good) to super relevance (bad).

To have an effective message, it has to be concise and to the point… something that can be carried by the masses with a unified voice.

The Arab Spring protests succeeded in overthrowing the governments of countries like Egypt because every person who picked up a stone to throw at the government’s forces in the streets wanted the same thing:  they wanted the ruling party and it’s corruption gone – end of story.

It’s a model that could have made the Occupy movement truly revolutionary and the Western world would be on it’s way to change.

But, instead, the Occupiers maintain an incredibly fractured front with nearly every person at these protests wanting a different form of change… and it’s that kind of behavior that those in power can effective ignore pretty much forever.

It’s sort of like someone on Facebook creating a group that sets out to draw attention to one thing that would seem very important – let’s say the abuse of raccoon dogs in China – and then proceeds to flood the group with links about Nike sweatshops in Thailand, the amounts of trans-fats in KFC chicken, and the failures of the American political system.

That Facebook user meant well, but is left wondering why he or she doesn’t have anyone joining their online cause and it’s simply because they couldn’t stay on message.

It’s the same in politics: the politician who’s most likely to win is the one who has a set number of priorities and then hammers away at them on the anvil of the public stage  - instead of jumping around from issue to issue as each voter mentions a problem during the campaign.

In fact, in the brief history of the Occupy movement, there’s only been one time that protesters got to the verge of getting some concessions made.

Several days ago, a group of Occupiers from the Los Angeles movement managed to shut down one of the United State’s most important ports by sealing off the entrance: trucks that would normally have picked up goods made in China and hauled them away to Walmarts across the nation couldn’t get in or out due to the mass of protesters standing in their way.

This ‘stand in’ lasted for about 4 hours before the Occupiers drifted away to their usual encampments… which is quite unfortunate.

Four hours may not seem like a long time, but when you take into account the amount of freight that goes in and out of the Port Of Los Angeles, even seconds of inefficiency cost shippers and receivers millions of dollars in lost revenue because those lost seconds propagate forward through time and can eventually turn into minutes and then hours.

So, when you make a four-hour stand, the collective sphincters of shipping magnates and the companies like Walmart or Target – who depend on their goods being delivered on time – clamp shut hard and then those execs start sweating as they start seeing the money they normally make slow down.

If those Occupiers had maintained their presence at the Los Angeles docks, and then got protesters from movements in other port cities to do the same, the very people who the Occupy movement is supposed to be targeting would become very uncomfortable – and would start thinking of ways to assuage the angry mobs.

Of course, that would depend entirely on the commitment of the people in the Occupy movement since those billionaire executives would put pressure on elected officials (that most assuredly received campaign contributions from companies controlled by said execs) to crack down on these protesters via legal means through the deployment of riot squads or military personnel.

If the Occupiers are willing to be arrested, pepper sprayed, tased, shot with high-speed bean bags, hit with sound cannons, bombarded with tear gas canisters, and beaten with billy clubs – all in sufficient numbers to completely overwhelm the legal mechanisms that were deployed on behalf of the 1% – then they could indeed successfully create change.

Governments that are freely and democratically elected have no stomach for bloodshed in the streets, especially at the behest of billion dollar corporations that could afford to lose some money if it meant that people’s lives would get better.

But, no.

The Occupy movement lacks that focus… that honest desire to change things.

The extensive camps across North America have become love-ins for the economically disenfranchised… meccas for every hipster, Gen X slacker, unemployed teacher, and general malcontent that doesn’t have anything better to do.

For these people, the message is the act… instead of the message leading to an act – which is why Occupy will eventually fail.

Media outlets focus on the Occupy movement mostly because it’s become a sideshow, but also because it provides some political drama as various city councils try to cope with the public disruptions.

In fact, the media are the only people honestly paying attention to the Occupy movement since the 1% have decided the Occupiers present no threat to themselves and their money-making empires.

So let me say this to you, Occupiers of the world: change your strategy or go home.

If you’re not actually interfering with the 1% by removing money from their pockets, you’re of no real consequence.

Gather up… firm up your resolve… solidify your message… and declare war on the 1%.

Block access to major ports.

Physically prevent people from shopping at major retailers.

Stop buying Starbucks coffee on your way to the Occupy camps.

Take your money out of the major banks and commit to a local credit union.

Honestly threaten the 1% by taking away their money… instead of being a bunch of dirty hippies standing around clapping each other on the back for a job well-done when you actually haven’t accomplished a single thing.

In the words of my progenitors: shit or get off the pot.

Or… in modern vernacular: get real or fuck off.

The Frayed Ends Of The Nuclear Cord

For all it’s faults (byproducts that have to be sequestered for half a million years, for instance), nuclear energy is amongst the best ways to generate electricity known to mankind at this time – discounting any future advances in fusion or solar power generation.

Nuclear doesn’t generate the greenhouse gases that spew forth from coal and natural gas power plants… isn’t effected by cloudy days or winter seasons like solar… has no problems when the air is still and fails to turn the windmills… and it doesn’t reroute entire aquatic ecosystems like hydroelectric dams.

But yes… there is that need to protect humankind and all our friends in the wild kingdom from the nuclear waste on scales of time that are longer than civilization has existed on the face of the planet.

Regardless, nuclear energy’s benefits are vast and every facility constructed to harness the power of the atom is a boon to society as it generally means there are less coal-burning plants toxifying the air we breath.

The problems with nuclear energy fall into two categories: environmental, which I’ve touched on above… and political, which I’m going to talk about below.

Nuclear reactors can be harnessed for electricity generation, yes… but they also can be used to create fissile material like plutonium or enriched uraniums that are necessary to create an atomic weapon.

Generally speaking, the technology required to build a nuclear power station is only affordable to nations that are more or less responsible enough to be trusted with any nuclear weapons that they might create – countries with governments that subscribe to the reality that deploying such weapons in anger would not be in their best interest.

Even the two most volatile neighbor countries that have nuclear weapons – India and Pakistan – realize that exchanging atomic potshots at each other would never be a small, localized engagement… that other nuclear powers greater than their own would most likely intervene with punishments of either military or political varieties.

With India being aligned with the Western superpowers like the United States, Great Britain, and France (don’t laugh… nukes can be dispatched from Parisian bunkers), a marginal country like Pakistan – who’s alliances aren’t clearly defined – would likely be struck with thermonuclear warheads carried by ICBMs or cruise missiles fired by New Delhi’s friends in the event Pakistan somehow came out on top.

The biggest check in the nuclear weapons business is that both the United States of America and Russia have enough nuclear weapons to end human civilization as we know it (or possibly altogether), with China, Great Britain, and France following behind them… and this is clearly enough to discourage smaller countries from developing any sort or atomic weapon.

There would assuredly be dire consequences for launching any sort of nuclear attack – no matter how much you hate the guy you’re pointing them at.

However, reality isn’t a universal concept in some corners of the globe.

There are a few governments that are so removed from society that they have become pariah states – the ones that nobody ever invites to the New Year’s celebrations at the United Nations, and ones that are perfectly happy with their status.

In the context of this discussion on smashing atoms, I’m focusing purely on the communist nation of North Korea and the middle eastern country of Iran.

Both countries eschew the global community (and the realities embraced by it) and have created unto themselves their own version of reality… one that generally places themselves at the center of the universe and deludes the ruling parties into thinking they’re untouchable/invincible.

In the case of North Korea, Kim Jong Il and his buddies (I use ‘buddies’ loosely since there isn’t a person in the country he wouldn’t shoot – including family members) rule the land in an almost empirical manner that really hasn’t been seen since the great dynasties of history: it’s taught to every North Korean child that Kim Jong Il is in fact a God.

In fact, North Korea barely qualifies as a communist state, and it can be argued – I’d imagine quite successfully – that it’s more in line with the leadership of Egypt’s pharaohs… just without the bountiful empire: North Korean citizens are probably the poorest out of any of the developed nations.

Kim Jong Il is so crazy that even his biggest (read: only) supporter at the United Nations, China, keeps him at arm’s length… and even then, they barely touch Pyongyang with their fingertips while wearing eight gloves on each hand.

The fact that this nutbar has access to nuclear weapons is entirely indigestible – and quite hard to fathom when you take into account that North Korea has no real money to speak of to pay for any sort of research program… but I suppose you can afford just about anything when you don’t actually have to pay the people who work for you.

Kim Jong Il is a god, remember? Don’t do what he wants and he’ll smite your ass… and probably your entire family while he’s at it.

If there’s any consolation, it’s that his atomic weapons are very basic and shoddily constructed: when testing them, they have a tendency to fizzle – more of a runaway nuclear chain reaction than an actual detonation.

These North Korean atomic bombs are barely in the same class as those deployed by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II… and nowhere near as advanced as even Pakistan’s.

But even the most rudimentary nuclear weapons are devastating… either through their explosive force (see photo below) or through the mass radioactive contamination of the target area.

Click Me

In  terms of instability, North Korea is like the guy who was arrested for killing his neighbor because he though the neighbor was telepathically raping his wife.

Nothing said by Kim Jong Ill or his government makes any sense, and North Korea has no qualms about threatening anyone with total and complete destruction… promising a war that will end Western civilization – despite lacking any way to follow through on these threats, even when including the estimated 5 to 8 nuclear weapons that Pyongyang possesses.

The North Korean military may have one of the largest standing armies on the world when compared to it’s national population, but the equipment they are outfitted with is barely any more advanced than it was during the Korean War in the 1950s – at best, it’s equivalent to Soviet designs from the mid to late 70s.

This irrationality is alarming for two reasons:

1) Technically, North and South Korea are still in a defacto state of war since the Korean War ended in a cease-fire treaty – a truce that’s been in place ever since… if only barely on some occasions – and that war could pick up at any time, and that becomes more and more likely as North Korea becomes more and more impoverished.

2) Pyongyang has made no secret of it’s willingness to help political entities that have similar designs to destroy the West… and has routinely shipped weapons and military equipment to those ideological comrades, and it’s not a stretch of the imagination that North Korea would share nuclear weapons technology – or even a finished atomic bomb – with those same comrades.

The only silver lining in the North Korean situation is that ships leaving North Korean waters are some of the most scrutinized vessels afloat: any tub that can carry anything bigger than a refrigerator is fair game for random inspections by South Korean and American naval assets – which makes shipping nuclear weapons, fissile material, or technology to create either of those things by water not really a winning strategy.

This of course doesn’t rule out shipping illicit weapons by land or air…. but similar searches are carried out against trucks leaving North Korea by Chinese and Russian agencies (how effectively, nobody in the West can say for certain), and all air cargo from North Korea is thoroughly screened at airports abroad.

There is only one destination outside of North Korea that North Korean ships and aircraft are welcome – and it also happens to be the other rogue nation with nuclear ambitions: Iran.

I’m sorry, Tehran… were you hoping I’d forgotten you?

Nope.

In many ways, you’re worse than those nutjobs in Pyongyang – mainly because, even though you’re batshit crazy, you’re also very focused on the destruction of those you hold in ill regard.

In Iran’s case, that’s most notably Israel.

There isn’t a day that goes by that Iran’s puppet government and it’s religious masters don’t call for the total destruction of the Jewish state, and it works on a daily basis towards that goal by funding terrorist organizations that operate in Palestinian territories.

If that wasn’t problematic enough, the Ayatollah also sends money to terrorist outfits – including Al Qaeda – that attack other Western nations that are allied with Israel.

And while the Ayatollah isn’t necessarily as committed to destroying the West as Osama bin Laden was, his plans call for weakening the resolve of Israel’s allies by hopefully making it more bother than it’s worth to the United States, Britain, and others.

It’s this fanatical devotion to destroying every single Jew in the Middle East (and everywhere else in due time) that makes Iran more dangerous.

While North Korea is more reactive – as in it puffs itself up and makes threats when it perceives itself to be threatened - and can be calmed down with offers of candy (financial and food aid), Iran is completely proactive in it’s plans… spending nearly all it’s money on weaponry and armed forces.

It should be noted than Iran has a lot of money to use for it’s own military and the funding of terrorism around the globe, and that money comes from the export of oil to the countries that need it – both the export of Iran’s own oil assets, and money from neighboring countries’ oil sales who are agreeable to the Iranian way of things… primarily certain factions inside Saudi Arabia.

While Western nations don’t conduct a lot of oil business with Iran, countries like Russia and China don’t make that distinction and gladly take any oil Iran can send their way to fuel their own economies.

Russian and Chinese weapons technologies have also readily been made available to the Iranian government, and this is why the Iranian military possesses weaponry that’s equal to the West’s technology of the late 1980s to mid-1990s.

You may not think weapons circa 1989 to 1995 would be all that dangerous to Western targets using weapons made in this millennium… but keep in mind, those Iranian weapons are equivalent to what the U.S. defeated Saddam Hussein with in the first Gulf War – so they aren’t to be ignored by the wise.

With all that oil money, Iran has been able to afford a fairly modern nuclear energy program – one that Tehran insists is for purely peaceful purposes and that they’re not at all interested in making fissile material for making atomic weapons.

You know what? Put a kid in a room with both a dart gun and a target to shoot at, he’s going to shoot those darts at the target the second you turn your back – no matter how much you tell him not to, and how much he denies his intention to do so.

The fact of the matter is that Iran has far more centrifuge units required to enrich uranium than are needed for the modest civilian-purposed nuclear reactor that Tehran claims is the only beneficiary – and these enrichment facilities are spread far and wide throughout the country, with some of them located underground in hardened facilities that would be problematic to destroy.

If you’re producing far more enriched uranium than you could possibly use in your nuclear electricity generation reactor(s), then that surplus uranium has to go someplace… and the two options that come to mind aren’t acceptable: a covert weapons program, or for export to other political entities that also have covert nuclear ambitions – Al Qaeda, for example.

The nuclear situation in Iran puts Israel – and by extension it’s Western allies – in a bind: while Iran potentially acquiring nuclear weapons capability is completely unacceptable, unilaterally attacking Iran in a pre-emptive strike would be heavy-handed and most likely to ignite a war that would spread like wildfire across the entire Middle East – and the forces of the Western allies are already exhausted from a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Which leaves Israel to act on its own – and one must also keep in mind that Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons of it’s own if the situation got out of hand.

However, while Israel might have enough thermonuclear devices to level Tehran and a few other Iranian cities, the fact is that Iran is the 2nd largest country in the region… and Israel is the smallest, and therefore extremely susceptible to being destroyed in a single nuclear strike.

There’s also the small matter of delivering those nuclear weapons to Iran as – as far as anyone in the West knows – all of Israel’s nuclear devices are in the form of gravity bombs and not mounted on long-range missiles, meaning that Israeli attack planes would have to fly through potentially hostile Lebanese, Syrian, Turkish, or Iraqi airspace before even getting to Iran.

The same holds out for any non-nuclear intervention raid Israel might want to stage against Iran in hopes of derailing the Iranian nuclear program like they did when they pounded Saddam Hussein’s atomic facilities into dust back in the 1980s – there’s just too much territory to cover from Israeli airfields to targets in Iran unless those Israeli pilots commit to a one-way suicide mission… and I wouldn’t put that past the Israeli people as they know the value of sacrifice and are a hardened people after decades of being under attack from all sides.

And yet… all the logistics of attacking Iran pale in comparison to the destructive potential of either the Islamic Republic Of Iran Army, The Army Of The Guardians Of The Islamic Revolution (the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard), or any other Iranian military body – or any paramilitary body the Ayatollah deems satisfactory enough to share with – possessing nuclear weapons when they are ideologically tuned towards destroying Israel and the Western world.

The situation is untenable and will need to be resolved prior to Iran developing nuclear weapons technology – and that time isn’t all that far into the future.

Am I being an alarmist?

No.

Everything I’ve said here is absolutely true and cannot be argued by anyone outside North Korea and Iran.

The world has been under the illusion up until now that only the big players could afford nuclear weapons, and to be honest, global opinions should have changed once India and Pakistan developed the Bomb.

But we’ve fooled ourselves into complacency again… that we can send strongly worded letters to Tehran and Pyongyang and they will simply throw up their hands with a smile, saying “Well…  it was worth a try, right?” before packing their whole nuclear infrastructure up in crates and shipping it to Russia for disposal.

Without total regime changes in North Korea and Iran, localized or global nuclear attacks aren’t just probable – they’re an almost forgone conclusion because both countries stand today as spiteful (in Pyongyang’s case), hateful (Tehran), and wholly irrational states.

Kim Jong Il and his son to follow him will continue to develop their primitive atom bombs into more effective hydrogen bombs by working their researchers to death at gunpoint while the citizens throughout North Korea – who depend on the government – starve to death in the streets (while Pyongyang’s resident god drinks Hennessy and collects expensive toys).

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his boss, the Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will continue on their path to nuclear weapons while they continue to hate on the Jewish people and deny the Holocaust – which was the reason the state of Israel was formed in the first place from land ‘donated’ from the surrounding Arab states – in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

To me, that’s the sure sign of Tehran’s insanity and the reason they can’t be trusted: to completely deny the Holocaust when it was thoroughly documented by both the Allies when the camps were liberated, and by the Nazis themselves with their meticulous records of the methodical extermination of the Jews who they deemed as sub-human… and the continued existence of facilities like Auschwitz  and Dachau to remind humanity that the Holocaust was real.

It’s the equivalent of Ahmadinejad looking up and telling the world that the sky is in fact purple and that we’ve been duped by the Jews into thinking it’s blue… which I’m pretty sure he’s already claimed once or twice in his hateful stand-up comedy routines at the United Nations headquarters.

Folks… these are people who can not EVER be trusted with the nuclear genie.

You should be alarmed… you should feel a sense of panic.

These people aren’t going anywhere and won’t change their ways unless we make them.

And believe me… they’re not going to blink when we send them angry emails from the United Nations’ Gmail account.

.

Invisible Planes & Your Shopping Cart

With the Canadian federal government once again chugging along after a year of elections on both the national and provincial levels, certain issues are coming up again from the previous edition of Parliament Hill.

Many of the issues are crime related… but there has been some renewal of opposition grumblings over the F-35 Stealth Fighter.

I’ve written all about the technological benefits of the F-35 previously, but I really didn’t touch too much on why we need a stealth fighter in the first place beyond the vague (but real) threat that Russia presents to our borders.

Currently – in the year 2011 – there is only one player in the global military arena that has a fully functional, deployable  stealth aircraft asset… and it’s to our benefit that we happen to be best friends with the U.S.A. and their F-22 Raptor squadrons.

However, other nation states around the world are progressing towards testing their own stealth aircraft – and those nations aren’t always on the up and up… and yes, I’m looking straight at China and the former Soviet Union.

With Russia, the situation is fairly predictable: just as in the days of the Cold War, Russia can be relied upon to act solely in it’s own best interests – even if those interests are counter to what the rest of the world finds acceptable.

One poignant example of this would be the Georgian War of a few years ago where Russian military forces invaded the territory of another sovereign nation… and then subsequently told the world it could collectively go fuck itself if we didn’t like it.

At the end of the Georgian conflict, it was practically the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again – except in microcosm – as American troops stood almost toe to toe against Russian counterparts as they brought aid and supplies to the stricken Georgia.

The only differences were that Georgia was a former Soviet communist state instead of Castro’s newly communist island, and there weren’t at least 3,000 nuclear weapons ready to be shot at the other side with the push of a button.

However, the situation was fairly typical when you study the long term behavior of Russian military commanders and their political overlords in Moscow – so, it’s not too far of a leap in logic that (when Sukhoi or MiG gets a stealth plane into full production) their behavior will change  much in the stealth era.

The only wrinkle in that observation is that Russia will export it’s military hardware to virtually anyone with deep enough pockets – and I would only assume that would apply to future stealth aircraft produced for the Kremlin.

Despite the appearances of – and the lip service towards – democracy, Russian politics is really the bastard son of Mr. Communism and Ms. Democracy… and has been placed into the foster care of Mr. & Mrs. Capitalist-Autocracy – and that autocracy needs money to pay out hush money as well as distribute infrastructure contracts to political allies.

This money comes from those sales of military hardware to the highest bidder.

You know who’s the main beneficiary of Russia’s sales of military hardware and technological know-how?

The People’s Republic of China.

Believe me when I say that this is a bad thing.

Why?

It’s not that big of  a secret that Beijing would like to fully control their political area of influence – essentially every island between Australia and Japan, and a few more going in the direction of India – and have been steadily building up their army, air force, and navy with hardware that was either manufactured in Russia, or designed there.

The most dangerous of these military assets are Kilo-class attack submarines… which are damn near impossible to detect in their newest configuration.

Why are they dangerous – aside from the obvious?

Because the Chinese have always intended for them to be a very real threat to American carrier groups – the very U.S. naval assets that keep China from unilaterally invading Taiwan… the island nation that Beijing maintains is Chinese territory and has simply been ‘misbehaving’ since the 1950s.

Ask your average Taiwanese citizen, and I’m sure they’d have a different opinion… and it’s that fact that the U.S. government counts on to maintain it’s political influence right off the coast of the world’s largest communist nation.

With these political tensions constantly at play, it’s very probable that the next global military conflict will start in the South China Sea – possibly by the sinking of a U.S. aircraft carrier by a Chinese Kilo using a conventional or nuclear torpedo.

What does this have to do with Canada?

The Chinese are developing a stealth fighter of their own, independent of Russian researchers.

And yet we in North America overlook all of these alarming facts because nearly everything at Walmart is made in China – so it’s not to our economical advantage to call China on it’s various sins… not least of which is Beijing’s abysmal record on human rights and dignities that allow for factories in China to pay their workers with dust bunnies and a few grains of rice so that Chinese manufactured goods are the cheapest.

Things are considerably more complicated for our American neighbors: a lion’s share of American debt is owned by Chinese banks, and if those debts were suddenly called in – and if Washington didn’t put up a fight – up to 25-30% of all sellable real estate in the U.S. would become Chinese owned… on top of  industrial land which is already owned by Chinese corporations.

All this means is that there are conflicts coming – and those conflicts will have air wars fought with stealth planes.

Even in small, isolated conflicts that will be resolved by NATO or the United Nations in the coming years could be fought with stealth air assets – and if you haven’t noticed, those type of wars are where Canada steps onto the word stage.

Libya’s skies were patrolled by Canadian warplanes this year.

We need the hardware that will allow men flying for the Royal Canadian Air Force to go forward into the future and not be held back by legacy military hardware designed with attitudes from the 1970s (which is where the CF-18 design originated) or the 1980s (where most attack jets available on the open market were designed).

The F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter) is that tool – a plane designed for the 21st Century, and for the air combat of 2020 and beyond.

The Canadian opposition parties are saying we should buy the Eurofighter Typhoon or the SAAB Gripen to replace our aging and rapidly failing CF-18s – but those planes are legacy designs from the 70s/80s/early 90s.

Yes, the Typhoon and Gripen are fast and agile aircraft… but they simply don’t bring to bear the warfare technologies that will be required in the future.

So… when China is no longer satisfied with just being an industrial power – and that’s coming, whether we like it or not – which planes do you want Canadian fighter pilots screaming through the skies in?

I know that I personally want them up there kicking ass and chewing bubblegum… long after they’ve run out of bubblegum.

How about you?

A Decade After The Fall: 9/11/11

Bright and early tomorrow, New Yorkers will have a new destination to fill their idle time.

Monday September 12th, 2011 marks the opening of the WTC/September 11th Memorial that takes up roughly half the 16 hallowed acres that formerly – 10 short years (okay… long years if you’ve been doing a lot of air travel) ago – housed the previous incarnation of the World Trade Center for 10 hours of that fateful Tuesday before being turned into a pile of smoking wreckage.

Up until now, the public at large hasn’t had any access to the WTC site – unable to stand on the ground where 2,500+ normal, everyday people were killed in an orgy of violence and death set in motion by hateful, bearded men half a world away in a country that for the most part was ignored by everyone except the Russians in the 1980s.

Monday morning, New Yorkers have the opportunity to obtain some closure as they can physically travel to the footprints of the North and South towers – looking deep into the pits where they once stood – that are now the world’s largest man-made waterfalls.

But more than just a water feature, the square tower imprints are bordered by bronze rails inscribed with the names of every soul lost to 9/11: both those perishing in the towers, and those killed at the Pentagon and in that barren field outside Shanksville, PA… which, like the Vietnam Wall in D.C., gives a place to mourn those souls – a great number of which simply vanished into thin air as their bodies were torn, crushed, and incinerated.

These bronze rails give those families who never received any remains of their loved ones a place to visit… something tangible where nothingness and abstract concepts have shadowed their daily lives for a decade.

Yet… the cynic deep inside me (maybe not that deep) wonders how long it will be until some asshat kid spray-paints a graffiti tag onto some part of the memorial? I fear it’s only a matter of time… whether it be on the bronze name rails, or on the side of the waterfalls, or on a tree – maybe the ‘Survivor Tree’ that was the last living thing pulled from the WTC wreckage?

Perhaps 9/11 is a tragedy that will transcend the disrespect that the 4chan generation has honed – the types of kids who video themselves urinating on other monuments to fallen heroes.

But I digress…

The memorial plaza will also host a museum, but that won’t be open to the public for another year – but will be very much worth the wait: all manners of debris and relics retrieved from ‘The Pile’ will be on display for people to see and emotionally connect with, including smashed firetrucks, ambulances, police cars, twisted ‘impact steel’ (portions of the WTC tower’s iron outer shell that the two hijacked planes collided with), recovered uniforms of fallen first responders.

However, the two defining features of the museum will be both iconic and immense: two of the recovered steel tridents that were an architectural flourish in the design of the WTC towers, and the naked retaining wall that held back the Hudson river from flooding the Trade Center’s lower levels and adjoining subway station – still covered in the nubs of structural supports that held the towers to the bedrock.

I’m not going to go on about the various politics of 9/11 as I’ve done that previously in this blog on another anniversary of the murders, and that topic has also been covered to death by those much more learned that myself – so what could I possibly add now?

9/11 is a defining moment that will stain and reverberate through history – and personal human conscience for the 90 years or so until the last survivors and victim’s family members have gone on to whatever is after this life – like Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, and the Challenger explosion… all of these events are something that you can look back and say with certainty where you were when you heard the news.

We, as a civilized and caring society, feel the pain of those affected by 9/11… even when the vast majority of us had nothing directly invested in the tragedy – having not lost a son, daughter, mother, father, aunt, uncle, or grandparent.

To not feel the collective grief is something one should be alarmed by… and something to admit with a great deal of shame.

But that is the way of the world: hatred consumes and burns inside many people… even in ways that aren’t quite so obvious, or not directly related to terrorism.

The myriad of conspiracy theories that surround 9/11 is a glaring example of that sort of hatred.

Groups of people who have – for the lack of a better term – hijacked the events and memories of 9/11 to suit their own biases and hatreds toward parties and persons of all political stripes… and generating fantastical, improbable, highly insane plots as to why all those people were really murdered.

By doing this… by creating these conspiracies… these people deny the simple truths of 9/11 and do a great disservice to the victims who gave their lives for nothing more than being in the wrong place and the wrong time.

Disrespect for those murdered is something I can’t tolerate, and isn’t something you should abide either.

So, in that spirit, I present here a video that comes completely without any message or leaning other than what is communicated visually – you can even turn off the audio to mute the music I chose.

You, yourself can be the judge of what happened 10 years ago today since you were blessed with two eyes and a brain capable of making independent conclusions.

Of course… many of you won’t do that, and will continue to think what someone else has told you to think – and I will feel a great swell of pity for you.

Newsflash: You’re Fat Because…

…you’ve made certain choices in your life.

Now, before I go on here, I’m going to exclude all those of you out there who have legitimate medical reasons for being overweight from the following discussion – there’s no reason to feel bad about your body if there’s nothing you could/can do to stop your [insert malfunctioning body part here] from making you extra-large.

Everyone else… well, you’re exactly who I’m talking to.

When you wake up every morning and look yourself in the mirror, do you loathe what you see because your body is statistically extra-large?

Guess what got you there?

You don’t know? Or, do you think you do know?

As a blogger that is always trying to be helpful, I will explain to you why you’re fat in terms that I hope you understand – but it’s going to take a very healthy dose of reality checking and honesty with yourself.

Also, this blog is somewhat aimed also at the Sally DoGooders who live in the proverbial land of milk and honey – the United States Of America – who are taking it upon themselves to sue every purveyor of delicious food in the public retail spaces of malls, plazas, and corner shops all across the land.

First, let me get straight to the facts of the matter… the complete and total truth, no matter who might want to argue:

1. McDonald’s hasn’t made one single human on this planet fat.

2. Burger King isn’t responsible for making your neighbor chubby.

3. Wendy’s had no part making that guy at work rotund around his middle section.

4. Hostess – the maker of the venerable Twinkie – can not be held accountable for shut-in video gamers being so big that they have to wear a muumuu around the house.

5. Little Debbie is not at fault for your Type II diabetes.

6. Neither Coca-Cola or Pepsi (and their Frito Lay snacks division) is on the hook for your massive stored energy deposits.

7. Hershey’s is not answerable for your pudgy fingers.

8. And finally, the local movie theater is not to blame for your adding a melted stick of butter to your popcorn.

Wait… how can that be?

You hear every day on the news that So And So is suing these companies for making people fat… so surely there is some merit to what they’re paying public interest law firms to make a case for… right?

No.

Not a single claim by these people can be born out in a court of law without the court itself being corrupted by social shortsightedness.

See this guy here?

Not a single corporate employee or company policy is responsible for him being a fat tub of lard – and let’s be honest: he most likely doesn’t have a thyroid issue.

Nope… he’s fat because of what he’s doing in the photo i.e. stuffing his face with food that has very little (or completely zero) nutritional benefit.

As much as society would seek an easy scapegoat for it’s rising number of obesity cases, there is not a single person to blame but himself.

Look at that photo very carefully.

Do you see anybody forcing him to chow down on that massive burger? Is there a representative from The Burger Shack holding his family at gunpoint, promising him that they’ll be released without harm as soon as he consumes all those fats and carbs?

No.

Chubby McFatass there is using his own, God-given free will to consume that sandwich.

So tell me – please – why The Burger Shack, McDonald’s, or Little Debbie should be held accountable for the choices that YOU make?

Yes… the retailers make products that you feel compelled to eat – either for their taste or their affordability or both – whenever hunger strikes you, but in no way are you mandated by law to consume their wares.

You, the consumer, have every bit as much power to consume a bowl of fruit salad as you do eat a box of Chicken McNuggets and a side of delicious McDonald’s french fries.

The fact that you opt for the Mickey’s fare is completely on you.

Television advertising makes you eat it? Hmmm…. okay – let’s look at that.

Pundits would say that the commercials you see on TV up to 100x a day have brainwashed you into being constantly wanting fast food or the kind of junk offerings you find at the neighborhood convenience store.

I suppose this could be held out to be true… if there wasn’t a whole lot of other crap on TV that’s being marketed directly to you that you blissfully ignore: how many of you out there order everything you see in infomercials?

Raise your hand if you’ve compulsively ordered the Snuggie For Pets? C’mon… it’s only $9.99! Who can resist that kind of deal?

Or… how many of you ran out and bought that Head On headache reliever? You know… the stuff you apply directly to the forehead?

I’m going to wager not a lot of you did either of those things because you were smart enough to realize the products were pure crap – choosing not to waste money and hurt your pocketbook by being stupid.

Yet… you CHOOSE to eat vast amounts of fast food that you know are pure crap and are going to hurt your body in the long run.

Why is there such a disconnect between choice and result?

There is nothing simpler than what’s going on here: it’s cause and effect – one of the most basic scientific concepts.

You do one thing and you get the predicted effect – in this case, you stuff an entire 12-inch pizza in your face in a single sitting which causes the effect of you gaining a few pounds.

Of course, this is assuming you’re not a professional athlete like Michael Phelps that consumes massive amounts of calories to fuel their workout routine.

Which is the backside to this issue: your buttocks take up two seats on the airplane because you refuse to do to the physical exercise required to burn off all of those calories you consume.

You’re choosing in your life to eat a Double Big Mac, large fries, large Coke, and two apple pies – without also choosing to engage in the physical exertion necessary to scrub all of those calories and saturated fats out of your system… which leaves your body no choice at all but to store those things as fat around your middle/butt/legs/arms/neck/chin.

Sure, there are pharmaceutical alternatives to exercise… substances that will make your body burn calories at an accelerated rate, but they are no substitute for using your own muscles to naturally do what that pill does nowhere as efficiently.

And yes… there are radical surgical procedures to physically limit how much food you can eat.

But why?

Why take these pills? Why go under the surgeon’s knife?

When you can simply CHOOSE to not eat these things in such great amounts that you become the size of a small Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon?

Society needs to give it’s collective head a shake and stop trying to blame others for our choices in life.

You can not sue Burger King for your own laziness.

The fat guy you see mowing his lawn – wearing shorts and a wife beater tank top – can’t seek damages from Dairy Queen because he can’t be bothered to get on an exercise bike.

In closing, let me make this abundantly clear, in case you are still confused:

Nobody other than you can blamed.

So stop trying to take kid’s Happy Meal toys away because you think they’re what cause childhood obesity – it’s the parent’s choice to buy them the little box of fats and carbs and then let the child sit around the house all day playing video games instead of running around outside for 20 minutes.

Take some fucking responsibility for your actions in life, and leave people alone who are trying to make an honest buck.

I Must Protest!

(NOTE: Edited with actual protester numbers on 8/30/2010)

Folks, I find myself writing this post in dire protest of protesters – but only those who congregate in less than critical numbers, and those who protest events worlds away from their selected protest site.

Am I the only one who finds it rather silly that 25 people 35 people in Peterborough gather up to protest a woman being stoned to death in Iran?

Is there some ayatollah in Iran who’s going to read about this little chanting session from a handful of attention seekers and say “Great Allah’s Beard! Why haven’t we seen the error of our ways before this moment? How could we have been so wrong?”

The notion is so clearly retarded that it makes my mind spin.

Before you say it, I must say that I do understand the underlying concept: protesting here will attempt to put upward social pressure on elected government officials who may actually have some influence on the world stage.

However, these people really need to be honest with themselves.

Nobody cares.

It’s a sad thing, yes… but none-the-less true: the woman who is being stoned to death has absolutely nothing to do with anybody this far removed from Iran (excluding any immigrants of an Iranian origin).

Sure… there are any number of bleeding hearts out there that will donate $10 to a $100 to an organization like Amnesty International to appease their conscience – but then they’ll move on with their day, completely absolved of responsibility and forget the whole thing.

At the end of the day, this sort of protest is as effective as protesting the sun or the moon.

Even if you blow the number of protesters up a thousand times, odds are that politicians still won’t listen.

The recent G8/G20 summit and it’s attached protests would be a great example of that: thousands upon thousands of protesters/rioters/all-around hooligans descended on Toronto to scream, shout, break windows, and set police cars on fire in protest of… what? The global economy?

They did all this for the government agents and representatives on hand, right? The ones that blithely ignored them?

Or how about the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire – burning to death calmly in protest?

Hòa thượng Thích Quảng Đức did this in South Vietnam to protest how Buddhist were treated – but this only resulted in lip service from the ruling government at the time.

For there to be any effect on governmental bodies, the protesters have to be a real and legitimate threat – threatening to take away the government’s power to rule through the election process: in a democratic society, every eligible voter gets one vote… and if enough of those votes are possessed by people protesting, that is an immediate danger to the politicos in charge.

To understand this, we have to go back in time… back to the American Civil Rights movement.

Martin Luther King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a truly awesome sight and one of the most effective protests that I can think of – nearly half a million people descending on the nation’s seat of power.

It showed the powers in Washington that the black man was now united in it’s desire for equality… that there were now millions of voters in the U.S.A. that would throw their ballots in the direction of whatever party and presidential candidate that would give them the right to stand up with pride and dignity in CrackerLand.

And while the results were not immediate, they were tangible: a year later, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

For protests to work, you need to have both numbers… a commonality… and authoritative body that can be threatened.

This can be easily demonstrated in many European countries where the governments actually fear the people e.g. France: if the French government passes some legislative charter that doesn’t sit well with the average citizen, a large fraction of the populace will take to the streets for days or even weeks until the government backs down.

Somehow, the North American populace has lost this power – and I have to say that we are poorer for it, but it is how it is.

However, I’ve been talking purely about democratic society and not those elsewhere that aren’t quite that free.

Let’s zero in on Iran where that poor woman is going to be stoned to death.

Yes… in theory, Iran has open and freely voted democratic elections – but the caveat is that the country is a theocracy ruled by ayatollahs, and that makes the presidential and governmental processes purely symbolic.

As much as we would like to heap hatred on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is merely the mouth piece of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – a puppet (a poorly dressed one) that spouts the religious party lines when the ayatollah can’t be bothered with the small details.

So, honestly, what are 25 people in Peterborough going to do against that?

Especially considering the entire frakkin’ UNITED NATIONS can’t get Iran to do squat?

The majority of U.N. members don’t want Iran to have any sort of nuclear energy whatsoever – in case it results in the development of nuclear weapons – but Iran just fueled up it’s first nuclear reactor with the help of the Russians (who also tend to do whatever they like).

If the world’s most powerful authority (at least ostensibly) can’t get certain nations to change their ways, what chance do a few attention whores carrying signs and chanting rhyming mantras have?

The Joint Strike Fighter

Canada has said yes to the F-35 Lightning II.

What’s of particular note here is the F-35 is billed as the Joint Strike Fighter – and the ‘Joint’ is applied in many ways when you look at it on a global scale.

For purely U.S. purposes, the Joint Strike Fighter moniker is based on the fact that it’s a ‘joint service’ aircraft i.e. that 3 branches of the U.S. armed forces will be flying it – the Navy (carrier adapted), the Air Force (base variant), and the Marines (vertical take off and landing variant).

When you step back to a macro scale view and look at how the F-35 applies to the global fighter scene, Joint Strike Fighter takes on a new meaning.

Eleven countries from around the world have contributed money to the development of the F-35: the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Israel, Singapore, and the United States (which contributed the lion’s share of spending).

The idea behind this venture was to supply all the countries involved with a common aircraft that would make joint operations between the stated nations more seamless – as well as allowing each state access to cutting edge technologies that they may not have been able to afford independently.

The end part of the previous paragraph is where countries like Canada specifically come in to play: Canada has nowhere near the tax base or military funding to develop a cutting edge fighter that could dominate other world player’s planes.

I don’t say that in an effort to kick my nation’s pride, but to only state an honest fact.

Also, there is some doubt as to whether our southern neighbors would take kindly to our designing and producing an air superiority fighter that could easily compete with their own: think back to Canada’s one proud moment in fighter design history (the vaunted Avro Arrow) and you’ll see how tragically influential the United States can be when it demands to be the kid on the block with the best toys.

Regardless, Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18s are quickly going to surpass their ‘best before’ date as they are all part of McDonnell Douglas’s first production run of the F/A 18 airframe – first flying for Canada in 1982.

In comparison, the United States has mostly moved to the newer F/A-18 Super Hornet – which has many performance upgrades over the Canadian legacy models, including better avionics and softer radar signature which are derived from being completely new planes as compared to modified airframes.

Yes, our CF-18s have been subject to regular maintenance and technical upgrades over the years – but for all intents and purposes, they are dinosaurs when compared to the rest of the G8 countries’ air force assets.

There are anecdotal stories that kick around the global fighter pilot communities of how Canadian Air Force staff had to make the rounds and beg for spare parts during our fighter jet commitments to U.N. and NATO missions in places like Kosovo and missions like Desert Storm – such as asking the Spaniards for spare batteries, etc.

How are we – as Canadians – to take pride in our military forces when they have to depend on the charity of other nations when we get into a pinch?

Does that make your heart swell with patriotism?

On second thought, forget I brought that up…

Canadian F-18s are aging and will soon have flown so many flight hours that their air frames will be considered unsafe to fly by technical standards.

We can not afford to send our top-notch pilots up into the air against threats to our global and national interests if there is a real chance that the jet will disintegrate under the stress loads that tactical maneuvers place upon a plane.

So here we are in 2010, nearly 30 years after we acquired our last fighter.

Why are tactical fighters important to Canadians?

What else will keep the newly ‘assertive’ Russian bombers out of our air space?

How else will we be able to fulfill our duties to NORAD, NATO, and the United Nations when it comes to rogue states?

Are we to just send along Good Luck cards from Hallmark?

No.

We need our boys to be in the thick of it, pulling Canada’s weight when it comes down to the nitty gritty – when some nation out there needs it’s ass kicked and priorities straightened out.

For Canada to have a voice in those kinds of matters, we need something to punctuate our sentences.

And nothing says that like a heat-seeking missile up the bad guy’s tail pipe.

We, as Canadians, are a peaceful lot and desire diplomacy over war – that’s a given… and a lot of us may not find spending $16,000,000,000 on 64 planes (including maintenance costs) to be a very good deal.

However, to paraphrase a very smart man, war is diplomacy when all other means have failed.

Sometimes, you have to stop using the carrot and start using the stick.

Wouldn’t you rather have a bigger stick than our potential adversaries?

The F-35 is that bigger stick.

It will be the first time Canada has owned a stealth fighter – one that is all but invisible to enemy radar… which is a very good thing when our young men are up in the skies against deadly forces – as any advantage in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat can be the difference between a pilot coming home in once piece and coming home in a body bag(s).

No, the F-35 isn’t the razor sharp portion of the cutting edge when it comes to fighter planes – that would be the F-22, and the United States isn’t sharing that aircraft with anybody.

Also, I must acknowledge the fact that the F-35 is years behind schedule and has saddled the U.S. Defense Department with numerous cost overruns – but in the end, the technology is still sound: whereas the F-22 returns a radar signature equal to that of a metal marble, the F-35 bounces back a profile of a metal golf ball  – which is still smaller than most birds.

Plus, the jet comes with cutting edge sensor suites, futuristic situational awareness systems for the pilot, and more weapons carrying capability than any plane of similar size – which leaves the F-35 as a solid No. 2 contender.

And this is where I must part ways with my preferred Canadian political party and the official Canadian Opposition – the Liberals.

The current federal Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, says that the Defense Department should have tendered the contract out to more manufacturers – instead of just handing it to Lockheed Martin on a silver platter… perhaps considering the No. 3 contender, the Eurofighter Typhoon.

From a strictly business standpoint, that would be a prudent idea – but when you take that business to the level of a nation state, there are many other things to consider: jobs for Canadians… wise investment of dollars Canada has already spent… how our armed forces will operate when hand in hand with other global players, etc.

Canada’s interest in the F-35 was initiated by the previous Liberal government when it was in charge of Canada’s future – to the tune of more that $100,000,000.

To simply walk away now would be a monumental waste of money, and a missed opportunity of epic proportions.

Iggy calls it a boondoggle, and is threatening to kill the contract the second the Liberal party takes power again.

I’m sorry, Iggy… but I’m going to have to step back and call you an idiot who would prefer to use a think-tank approach to solving skirmishes.

In this one instance, I have to painfully concede that the conservative mindset is correct: the candle with the biggest wick wins.

This blogger may not speak for all Canadians at all times, but I’m pretty sure I speak with one voice when I say this:

We want to win.

.

.

.

See video of the F-35 here

History Blog: War & The Nuclear Option

Since we’re on the cusp of the anniversary of W.W.II’s end in Europe, I got on a bit of a history kick for a while there in my video studio – though very little of it had to do with the war in Europe.

Okay.

Moving on now.

Standby for a forthcoming rant.

The Smell Of Election Is In The Air

I love the smell of ballots in the morning… it smells like victory.

Yes, ladies and germs, it’s time to heave Steve!

It’s been time to heave Steve for… I dunno… four years?

This may sound petty and small, but the guy has the personality of an empty refrigerator box – looks useful on the outside, but completely empty on the inside… fit for vagrants and the homeless to use as shelter.

Wait.

No.

Harper has no time or compassion for the homeless and destitute, so scratch that last portion.

All Stephen Harper has time for is big business and ways that he and his cronies can help making fat cat C.E.O.’s lives easier.

What else do you expect of a U.S. Republican who was born in a Canadian body?

Ever so long ago, before the years of bad hair and horrible sweaters, I had some hope for Steve because he made some good sounding promises to the body of our military – promising to get them better tools and weapons so that they could go out into the world and spread Canada’s image and values into the global theater through quality peace keeping.

In four years, what has Steve done on this front?

Honestly, the Conservatives have made good in that one area for the most part: new planes, new guns, new jeeps, and new soldiers.

But…

Why is it that as a peacekeeping force, we don’t even rank in the top ten on a global scale anymore?

We used to be THE country people turned to when they needed help…  but now our spot in the big ol’ United Nations Rolodex has been shifted more towards the middle – and that really kind of smarts in the national pride department.

I mean… for crying out loud… the United Nations was pretty much Lester B. Pearson’s (Canadian prime minister from 1963 to 1968) idea to begin with – and they don’t even call? WTF?

Yes, I do realize that for a long while, we were the ones doing all the grunt work in Afghanistan while the Yanks were busy trying to set up Exxon in Iraq – and that’s something to be proud of (and yes, I understand other Commonwealth military outfits were there as well).

However, that’s pretty much the only place we are.

Why?

The reason why is this: Stephen Harper sees peacekeeping as a function of budget i.e. if there isn’t money in the budget for sending our men and women to to far-flung places around the globe, then he can’t really justify having the Department Of Defense issue the order.

This… this I find completely intolerable.

Peacekeeping is a means of projecting compassion around the globe, and showing those in need of help that Canadians as a people care about the situation.

It’s the Canadian way… but not the way of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives – which some would say makes the lot of them un-Canadian (but I’ll refrain from that chorus as it sounds a lot like American politics).

The longer Harper stays in office, the more xenophobic Canada seems – xenophobia being a fear of peoples and cultures different than your own.

Stephen Harper is mostly against trade missions to other countries who’s names don’t rhyme with Texaco or ‘lopsided plates’ – since the majority of Canadian businesses are either owned by or export a lot of Canadian jobs to places that rhyme with those two things.

He’s also pro-Christian, anti-women’s rights, anti-homosexual, and all-around anti-reality- well, any reality that doesn’t precisely match his own beliefs.

In fact, the Conservatives are the kings of being out of touch with reality.

Their membership is chock full o’ cronies that just make shit up.

Take for example the local Conservative goon… err… M.P., Dean Del Mastro – who, aside from looking like he belongs in a movie about organized crime, is best known for making shit up to make himself and his party look good in the eyes of the electorate.

Pretty much the day before the last election was called, he randomly blurted out that he and an anonymous developer had a plan for Peterborough that would brings jobs and tourists to the area – despite not putting anything forward or hinting at this proposal to ANY OTHER LIVING SOUL at any time prior.

The nature of this project? Doing away with green space owned by Parks Canada so a hotel/convention center/amusement park/IMAX theater could be installed just meters from the historic Peterborough Lift Lock.

When confronted about this harebrained scheme, the Honorable Member had very few details to share – saying that he wished to respect the anonymous developer’s privacy.

Right.

The buffoon even wasted tax-payer money on a mail-in ballot over whether the Peterborough electorate would support such a development – to which he received both resounding apathy and ‘no’ votes.

When Global National came to town last fall during election fever to do a broadcast live-on-location, Del Mastro suited up his own squad of goons in hockey jerseys adorned with the Conservative logo and tried to invade the crowd of spectators that were watching Kevin Newman do his broadcast thing (note: this blogger appeared on air in an ‘ask the electorate’ segment).

Needless to say, the Global producers turned back this goon squad and completely ignored them for the most part.

That sort of spectacle is the party signature.

Just show up randomly and spout party beliefs.

Do any of my fellow Canadians remember the random political attack ads (example) trashing the Liberals that Stephen Harper directs the party’s media arm to run at completely random times – regardless of whether there’s an election afoot or any other sane reason to do so… squandering taxpayer’s money in the process?

I do.

Let’s face it, folks.

The Conservatives are not on your side unless you’re male, white, rich, Christian, running a business empire, hate gays and lesbians, believe that laws and regulations exist purely to benefit those in power, that the needy and disabled are only trying to milk the public coffers, the environment can fend for itself (stupid polar bears!), and of the firm belief that the tax burden should be shouldered by only individual citizens.

If that’s you, please disregard everything I just wrote and vote for your local Conservative candidate.

Me… I’m voting Iggy and the Liberals.

Remember…

Remember, remember…

The 11th of September.

Here we are 8 years down the winding path that time always leaves behind in our wake… beyond all the twists and turns, obstacles and ditches, and friends and enemies that we have passed by on our way to wherever we are going.

Who here remembers what they were doing on 9/11 before they learned about what had happened in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania?

I can’t specifically remember, but that period in my life, I was going through a homeless phase after splitting up with my ex-fiance Aimee for a spell – which happened a few times over the 5 years she and I were together.

How many of you remember what you were doing exactly when you found out?

This I do remember.

I was sitting at the public library, using the pay-for-play internet service to check my email and surf for whatever it was that I was interested in at that point.

Through my travels over the interwebs, I caught snippets of stories out of New York about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

This was at about eleven o’clock in the morning, long after the towers had come crashing down – but in the circles I was browsing, news wasn’t exactly front and center so I was missing the whole story.

As far as I knew, some idiot had forgotten which way the sky was and had plowed his Cessna it one of the WTC towers.

While I was surfing, a MSN box popped up and said my friend Steve had popped on.

Steve had been attending a bible college in Florida over the summer and we only chatted here and there, so I messaged him and made some lame joke about how he should watch out because planes were falling out of the sky that day.

Now remember, I had no clue about the scope of what was going on south of the border.

Man… did I ever get an earful – which left me a bit pissed off (because I didn’t know what his deal was) and a bit more curious as to what the actual story was with the plane that I had read about in passing.

It didn’t take me long to get the whole scope of the situation, or at least the essentials as my $10 dollars was running out.

After that, I waited until the evening news to get the big picture with video and sound and a lot of ‘Oh my god’.

Suddenly, being homeless didn’t really seem that big of a deal.

Fire fighters from my city traveled southward in hopes of helping the victims in New York.

Days later, I moved into my new apartment and got my utilities and internet connected.

The Time Magazine subscription I had set-up online began to kick in a week or so after that and I began to learn about the who’s and why’s of what actually happened during that fateful day

Names like Osama bin Laden.

Organizations with names such as Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

It seemed so extremely bizarre and otherworldly that crazy old men who lived in caves in the middle of the desert could strike out and destroy so many innocent lives in an orgy of seething hatred – thousands upon thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe.

So when the decision came down that the United States of America was going to invade Afghanistan in efforts to root out these evil doers, I was all for it.

I cheered every time I saw a bomb fall from a plane.

I became excited every time I saw ordinance explode.

I compared the military hardware that was in theater to the encyclopedias both on my shelf and in my head (I’ve always been a warfare enthusiast… World War II was my specialty).

However, as the war raged on, I began to realize that the U.S. Marines were not going to catch up with Osama… all they were going to get were his Taliban flunkies whom he gladly hung out to dry.

Eventually, the full-scale war in Afghanistan wound down when U.S. commanders came to the same conclusion that I had.

They left token forces behind to make sure the Taliban stayed out of Kabul, and left the cave-by-cave manhunt to NATO forces who had tagged along.

Things were quiet for a while before George W. concocted some crazy-ass bullshit about how Osama was chillin’ with Sadam Hussein and decided to throw an entirely new war in Iraq – hoping to finish what George Sr. had started a decade earlier when Iraq had invaded Kuwait.

As time went by, it became very clear as to how much bullshit George W. Bush’s administration had cooked up in order to roll tanks down Main Street, Baghdad.

It didn’t really matter, though.

What was done was done.

The idiot managed to get himself re-elected based on the Terrorist Boogeyman that he had convinced the American people was hiding around every corner – which may well be entirely accurate, but any accuracy was diminished by the fact that it was political gamesmanship at both it’s finest and worst.

Sadam Hussein was tried in a kangaroo court and sentenced to hang.

The man did deserve to be hanged for things he had done to his own people over the decades that he had been in power – but the judgment and sentencing should have been carried out with more decorum in someplace like the Hague… instead of inside former Sadam palaces staffed by angry Iraqis who were being propped up by the Bush Administration.

To add insult to injury, Sadam’s hanging was graphically broadcast over YouTube for all the world to see.

During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, countless Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives had been captured by U.S. forces and quietly scuttled off to the internment camp set up at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba – without legal rhyme or reason beyond having been labeled ‘enemy combatants’ by George W. Bush and his cronies.

These poor bastards (and yes, I do recognize that these are people who want to kill every single man, woman, and child in the Western World) have been tortured for 8 years off and on with no one able to do a bloody thing about it since the Bush Administration and it’s point-men at the C.I.A. and the Defense Department were above the law in their own eyes.

To this day,  nobody knows exactly what to do with these prisoners since they present a serious problem to the new Obama Administration and the world at large.

What do you think would happen if Barack Obama signed an order today to magnanimously allow all these detainees go home right this instant?

They would go back to whatever country, town, or mountainside that they came from and tell everyone who would listen to them EXACTLY what happened to them over the course of the last eight years – or they might embellish their tales somewhat… but it’s hard to imagine any sort of embellishment that would top the actual torture that went on in the cells at Guantanamo.

How do you think that would make their compatriots feel? Like giving all the westerners a big hug?

Or… what do you think would happen if all these people went on trial and we sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty?

Will we all get flower bouquets from our friends at Al-Qaeda head office?

I find that prospect to be very dubious indeed.

So here we are, eight long years later and the forces that conspired to kill and maim so many people on that sunny late summer day hate us more than ever.

Doesn’t that make you feel warm and tingly inside?

Or does it fill you with abject terror?

What is it that you think we as citizens of the ‘civilized’ world should do to rectify this situation?

I’m slightly partial to an angry mob showing up at the Bush compound in Texas and grabbing Dubya right out of his bed before sending him to the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan via UPS while he’s still in his pajamas.

That’s gotta be worth something to Osama, don’t you think?

However, I honestly don’t know if there can ever be an end to this circle of hatred and violence in the Middle East.

The fact that Barack Obama has tried to open a dialogue with the Islamic world gives me a faint glimmer of hope that at least the damage that has been done will stop happening.

If the Islamic peoples of the world at least take a moment to hear calmer head speaking to them, maybe they can calm down as well.

If you take away the people’s anger and mistrust towards us in the West, how are organizations like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda supposed to function? Where will they find volunteers?

Maybe then we’ll all be able to sit down and sing a global chorus of Kumbaya.

Then again, maybe not.

You know what?

I don’t frikkin’ know.

Shiver Me Timbers…

Piracy.

Not the type as brought to vivid cinematic life by Johnny Depp.

Nope.

No sailing vessels brandishing the good ol’ Jolly Roger (well… there IS one, but I’ll get to that).

This is the type that I think 90% of us have been guilty from time to time.

This is a blog about what is referred to as I.P. Piracy – the piracy of Intellectual Property.

These days, this battle is fought over the much discussed file-sharing programs that live on a lot of our computers – whether we identify ourselves as pirates or not – and that we don’t much think about since it seems natural to us.

However, this sort of piracy is but only the latest iteration of a time-honored tradition that has been happening for generations – at least as far back as 1965, and is only coming to the forefront now due to it’s ease of use in the digital age.

Let those of us who are old enough remember back to the days of the mix tape.

What a wondrous thing!

We could put 60 minutes of music on a portable storage device and take it wherever we wanted… 1 hour of music that we, the people, chose from various sources and artists to entertain us and our friends.

We were not beholden to what the music empires of Hollywood forced us to listen to if we didn’t want to. We could put 12 songs on a tape, and each of those songs could be by twelve different artists signed with 12 different music labels (whether we owned the source albums or recorded the tunes from the radio) – thereby creating our own musical identity that reflected exactly who we were.

This is what lead to the often quoted act of giving a mix tape to the person who you loved – something that you hoped would let them see who you truly were.

Yes. Those were the days of such universal freedom.

Or how about VHS tapes?

It was pretty much the same process – but with video!

We could record any movie we wanted onto a fairly cheap VHS tape at various speeds and levels of quality to maximize our viewing pleasure – sometimes as many as THREE movies on one tape! (Which for the most part, can’t be replicated on a DVD to this day – FYI.)

We could tape movies right off the TV (when watching movies on broadcast television was still relevant to the masses), or those of us with sufficient technological savvy could rent movies and then duplicate them to our own VHS tapes with nobody being the wiser for it!

Let’s do a quick poll:

How many of you over the age of 25 have done either the mix tape or the VHS recording? Come on, be honest with yourself.

That’s what I thought.

All of you are pirates!

How does it feel to be one of Hollywood’s most wanted – and not because you’re talented?

You’re not a pirate?

Think again, me harties.

You all signed up aboard the good ship S.S. Somethin’ Fer Nothin’…

…And trust me: Hollywood hates you.

Hates you with a fury that is seldom matched throughout the passages of history.

If the Hollywood studios knew exactly where you lived, they’d send out 5 musclebound goons to each and every one of your houses and homes to take baseball bats and crowbars to all of your electronics and other prized possessions – smashing everything into teeny-tiny bits and smoldering circuits before giving you a solid punch to the gut on the way out of your house as a thank you.

Why?

I’ll tell you EXACTLY why, dear friends and readers.

Money.

They would do that over money.

You see, every time you made a mix tape or did up VHS copies of movies and shows, you were paying the studios precisely zero dollars and zero cents (not entirely true for Canadians: there has long been a secret tax that you don’t see on the receipt applied to blank recording media sold in Canada, and that sales tax is funneled in the direction of organizations ‘representing’ recording artists and production studios).

This ‘free’ entertainment does not sit well with studio executives at all.

No sirree, Bob.

Hollywood studios expect – no, DEMAND – to be paid for every single nanosecond of entertainment that they produce – which is a somewhat fair expectation since they paid X number of millions of dollars to produce and market it.

If you’re listening to The Beastie Boys, you better have paid Def Jam, Grand Royal, and Capitol Records the money owed.

If you just finished watching The Dark Knight, the Warner Brothers and their sister Dot better have your cash in exchange for that privilege.

Before I go on here, I would like to point out a fairly gargantuan logic hole in Hollywood: stores that sell previously enjoyed records/tapes/CDs/video cassettes/DVDs.

All of the money that is made via the reselling of previously owned Hollywood product does not go anywhere near Hollywood.

Profits made by these stores go straight into the store owner’s pockets, which are then levied by the tax man. Neither the store owner or the tax man share this bounty with Warner Brothers, Viacom, Universal, Fox, or any of the others in the myriad of media studios.

To this day, Hollywood has not made a public complaint about these operations.

For all intents and purposes, the big studios don’t care since they’ve been paid at least once for the music and movies that are being sold – whether it’s being resold once or 100 times – which is not too dissimilar from what happens in the world of digital piracy since 80% of the material out there for download has been purchased from a retailer initially.

As I said, it’s a huge hole in Hollywood’s argumentative logic.

Which brings us to the next thing.

You downloaded The Beastie Boys via LimeWire?

You obtained The Dark Knight via BitTorrent from an aggregator like The Pirate Bay?

Oooooh boy. How many vital organs do you think you can live without?

I only ask because Hollywood wants to eviscerate you and roast the resulting organs on a spit over the burning coals of everything you own.

Gory, yes… but oh so completely accurate.

Believe you me, friends: there are studio executives out there who would take those of you who download stuff habitually, place you against a wall before a cluster of HD video cameras streaming the feed live over the internet from multiple angles, and shoot you in the face personally without any moral qualms or hesitation in hopes of discouraging your comrades from doing what you were doing without thought.

However, since this a world full of laws and regulations, they can not do that.

So they’ve been doing the next best thing – well, the next thing legally available to them within the framework of the law – and suing individual people in court over what they describe as intellectual property theft.

This has happened to thousands of people in the United States, and to a smaller number of people in other jurisdictions – regardless of legal standing.

In many cases, there is no specific proof and is the legal equivalent of ‘He said/She said’.

For the most part, the inner guilt or limited financial means of their victims quickly result in monetary settlements that reach into thousands of dollars.

There have been a few cases that eventually wound their way to trial this year – even long after the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had said they would stop issuing legal actions against suspected file sharers.

Surprisingly – given the nature of the so called “evidence” – one woman was found guilty and ordered to pay a whopping 1.92 million dollars for possibly sharing 24 songs over the mostly defunct Kazaa file-sharing network.

Let’s take that into perspective.

Purchasing the same songs through a service such as iTunes would have cost $24.

That means – at least in terms of cost recovery – that the studio is recouping what it would have cost for each of those songs to be purchased legitimately 80,000 times.

I don’t care who the music artists were – 80,000 downloads PER SONG seems a bit far-fetched when taking into account that this was only a single file-sharing person.

Given an average download time of 2 minutes per song with a broadband internet connection, it would have taken 64,000 hours to download that amount of material.

64,000 hours equals 2,666 days.

2,666 days equals roughly 7 years.

Yes, I do understand that many people can download and upload the same file simultaneously.

Let’s assume there were constantly seven people downloading song of this lady’s computer at all times.

That would have still taken 1 year to accomplish – 1 year of non-stop internet connectivity with Kazaa ALWAYS running.

Is it just me, or does that seem a wee bit hard to believe?

Would you rather give up a kidney and maybe part of your liver instead of paying $1,920,000 at a lawyer’s equivalent of knife-point?

I’m pretty sure I would.

It makes you really think though, doesn’t it?

I mean… it’s really kind of an obvious question.

Who exactly are the pirates?

Durrrrrr…

Hey.

How are you?

Fancy a seat?

Yes?

Good.

Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.

No. That’s not fair.

Nobody died today (well, to be honest, averages say that 123,000 people have died today so far all around the globe) – nobody of any global importance anyhow.

However, today was the moment that a lot of us hopefuls realized that for all the good Barack Obama means to do in the world, he’s only going to accomplish maybe 40% (and that’s being generous).

Why is that?

It’s because the politicians on the other side of the aisle from his party – namely, the Republicans – will find a thousand different ways to tear the president down in the eyes of the general voting public.

For every honest and forthright statement that Obama puts forward, some Republican pundit in the back offices of Congress sends out a fax to all the other Republicans on how to disqualify what he said.

Today’s broo-ha-ha over Obama’s back to school speech aimed at STUDENTS is the most stunning example of this.

Barack Obama’s speech to America’s youth was meant to do one thing, and one thing only: encourage the students to be better.

The U.S. president is aware enough of today’s youth culture to realize that students are okay with being stupid – and decided (rightfully) that this was not acceptable in any way, shape, or form.

How can anyone fault the guy for doing something most of us over 25 would love to say today’s idiot youth?

Today’s kids are encouraged by peers – and by popular media to an extent – to be absolutely dumb-as-rocks and asinine to the point where it borders on lunacy.

How is this trend even remotely acceptable?

My fellow Canadians and I could only dream of someone of national import – someone with social clout – to take the time and branch out to the disenfranchised young people of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and other places and give them a talking to.

Someone who could pull on the collective ear of today’s public school attending young people and tell them to stop being little douche bags.

Alas… we don’t have ANYONE like that. Our prime minister is far too busy collecting knit sweaters and handing out tax breaks for the ultra-rich.

However, I’m focusing on our American neighbours today.

The Republicans have packaged their partisan politics in an easily digested package that appeals mainly to the people most likely to be the most vociferous in the media – John & Sally Six-Pack.

John and Sally are the people who most resonate with the Republican party – mostly because they are uneducated (or barely educated) rednecks who just love to see their own faces and hear their own voices on the six o’clock news – which works out extremely well for the Republican party because the incapacity for independent and rational thought makes John & Sally VERY programmable.

All the Republicans have to do is wind them up and point them in the general direction of the nearest television camera broadcasting from the field.

What else are they going to say since they can’t come up with ten intelligent words strung together? They have no choice except to say exactly what they heard from any random Republican talking head on Fox news, or heard on the radio from Rush Limbaugh.

This strategy has been used to great effect during the American health debates that are happening all over the U.S.

In this instance, however, they’ve narrowed down the subject quite a bit.

“They don’t need to be told by the president what their responsibilities are. It’s the parents’ responsibility to teach them that, not the government.”

That was the comment from an actual redneck parent (whom flunked high school and now cleans carpets) who had pulled their children on the first day of school so as not to be exposed to the evil Democrat’s clearly-socialist indoctrination attempt.

I suppose that would be a perfectly acceptable statement to make if that parent – or 60% of parents in North America – had any intention to teach their kids ANYTHING! And I do mean ANYTHING.

By and large, today’s parents can not be bothered to deal with their children in any meaningful way – whether it be hanging out with them and throwing a ball around, or taking an interest in their school studies (other than to yell “Do your homework!” up the stairs to the second floor where the kids will dutifully ignore them). Hell, sit down with your kids and play video games… because you will at least gain SOME insight into that portion of their lives.

I’m not sure who’s fault this is, really. I can only say it’s a confluence of trends that started in the 60′s and went into the 80′s – from the women’s liberation movement demanding women have equal jobs in the workplace, to the consumer society that arose from the yuppy culture which required all adults to have 9-to-5 jobs so they could keep up with the material wealth of their neighbors.

Today, parents don’t have the time to do any actual parenting – and those who do can’t be bothered.

Don’t mistake me. There are some really exceptional parents out there who are absolutely stellar at parenting – but they are just that: exceptional. They are the exception to the general status quo.

So where else are today’s kids supposed to get any sort of positive influence?

Celebrities?

If you said ‘yes’, then I must really stop and say: are you freakin’ kidding me?

Girls aspire to be Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, or Kristen Stewart – who may have a collective I.Q. of 110 all together.

Boys aspire to be 50 Cent, Eminem, or Dane Cook – and really, do any of them really rate kids looking up to them?

So, yes… I’m all for President Barack Obama – arguably the most powerful man on the planet – having a candid sit down with today’s youth and telling them to smarten the hell up.

I applaud him telling kids to stop being little dumbasses and to aspire to being something greater.

I know that somewhere out there, in today’s public school system – whether it be in Canada, America, Britain, or some other place on this planet – is a kid who’s going to make a very important discovery that will alter the direction of the human species in a positive way.

I can only hope that Obama’s speech today – or some other well-meaning talk given by someone else of gravitas to that one special kid – will fall on their ears and make them want to be that someone and reach out for their destiny.

Or… that kid can be the next idiot doing something stupid on YouTube.