BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID

It is said that the Evening News is where they begin with - 'Good Evening;' and then proceed to tell you why it is not. As this is written the European Common Market, the "Euro Zone" is at the brink of financial and political collapse after Greece backed-off a pledge to fix its debt crisis, proposing instead to bring the matter before a national referendum. (Beware of Greeks bearing referendums!)

The net result being that the long simmering worldwide deep-Recession, a troublesome Depression for many, which began when banks in the United-States over-extended their own credit in 2008 does not appear to be going anywhere north of the ledger for the foreseeable future. Investors and retirees who squirreled away their nest-eggs 15 years ago in so-called safe instruments saw the value rise until 2001 then flatten-out and stagnate. Check the major stock market indices: They are hovering over the same territory as ten years ago. Little wonder that desperate people have taken to the streets in shiftless and pointless "occupy" protests.

Weather extremes so severe that some regions
may be only "marginally habitable".

Just as the planet's population topped 7-Billion souls earlier in the week,  scientists issued a warning that there are too many of us here..."global warming isn't the sole villain in future climate disasters. An even bigger problem will be the number of people who live in harm's way." - One of two conclusions reached in a yet unpublished report of a Nobel Prize winning panel of experts working for the United-Nations and the World Meteorological Organization. A draft summary of the report was leaked to the Associated Press in the United-States probably because its authors fear their conclusions will be "watered-down" by U.- N. officials, politicians and diplomats after a scheduled meeting to review its content in Uganda near the end of the month.

To digress: Critics of The Bilderberg Group, the highly secretive club of influential business tycoons, financiers and politicians formed in 1954, have accused the "club" of fomenting a plan to reduce the planet's population to a sustainable 500-million to 1-billion people....

The leaked report obtained by the Associated Press says our future together is one of grim floods, more heat waves, more droughts, typhoons, stronger hurricanes and, if the world economy wasn't already bad enough, far greater costs to deal with weather catastrophes.  It warns that extremes occasioned by climate change may eventually grow so severe that some locations become..."increasingly marginal as places to live." (!)

AP says the report claims the world will have more extreme spells of 'heat' peaking as much as 5 degrees (C) hotter by 2050 and as much as 9 degrees by the end of the century. Weather reports being compiled in the United-States show already that 2,703 specific daily high temperature records were set this past summer (2011). According to Weather Underground Meteorology, that makes it the hottest summer in the U.S. since the height of the Great Depression Dust Bowl of 1936. - Maybe there's a noteworthy parallel here!

Perhaps there is a valid reason after all why the mysterious centuries' old "Mayan Calendar" expires in December 2012.

HAWAII CALLS

Clearly the Prime Minister and his handlers have (somehow) managed to convince the President of the United-States to appear and appease Mr. Harper's long sought photo opportunity over the penning of "Perimeter Security" lite: Booyah! And so what, if that pesky Mexican guy must tag along.

Three Amigos - Not exactly as shown.

High-Fives at the PMO in Ottawa as the White House confirmed late on Friday that President Obama is convening the North American government leaders and NAFTA partners to a summit of the "Three Amigos" in Honolulu on Sunday, November 13. Really just a brief get together after Obama hosts the leaders of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation, nations over that weekend in his hometown.

Frankly it's just we Canadians who may be sufficiently gullible to be sold a contrived photo-op which the handlers of "your Harper government" will tout as a sure sign of equality of purpose with the large economic power south of our border.

Amidst the mess back home, as Obama struggles to re-rail his failing presidency the last thing he wants is to appear to be facilitating business with foreigners (us!)  - Even less in the same breath explain to Mexican Honcho Calderon that he's opening-up Canada's borders while building a massive fence along Mexico's.  Fact is the "Three Amigos" last met when George Bush was President in 2009 at the Chateau Montebello Resort just south of Ottawa. In this case Obama and I suspect Calderone are happy to schedule the meeting as an afterthought to APEC, late on a Sunday afternoon in a time-zone 7 hours beyond the east-coast, and far enough away as possible from the prying-eyes of the American News networks.

Lest we be fooled: It's just the spin-doctors at Harperland Inc. who will doing their damned best to make sure this moment in history leads the following Monday's news headlines back here in the frozen north. The "Perimeter Security" pact announced with great fanfare the better part of a year ago was to have been finalized last summer. Instead, as Mr. Obama's popularity has tanked in the USA the negotiations have become an irritant and an embarrassment to the Harper Government: A "Buy America" provision has been tacked-on to Obama's jobs creation legislation. A new trade deal with Central America has re-introduced the $5.50 (per person) Customs user fee on Canadian travellers entering the United States, and legislators in Washington are agitating for U.S. ports to be given preferential treatment for goods entering North America from abroad.

Ay, Caramba! If this wasn't such a farce; I'd be expecting Don Ho to break-out into the Hawaiian Wedding Song.

STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE

Actor Johnny Depp who stars in an autobiographical film about Hunter S. Thompson, "The Rum Diary" which opens this weekend, says the journalist/author committed suicide in 2005 because of his growing disillusionment over the collapse of the America dream. Depp says Thompson's faith in, and disappointment with, America resulted in a..."bubbling oozing rage especially during the Bush era."

Perhaps a lesson not too late to grasp for moderates growing rageful at the people who attempt to run our lives. - Oh, Canada! A country with a proud history of accommodation, peacekeeping and inclusion, in the grips of the new hawks of the western world who, in the name of their "War on Big Government" justify policies which make no sense, decisions that can't be justified and initiatives only understood by the few who may be privy to a hidden agenda.

Lest I digress: "War" is such a distasteful term that it should NEVER be utilized in the same sentence as government; and most certainly never to justify initiatives against the democratically constituted institutions of a peaceful society. I am disappointed at the orchestrated attacks against our cultural institutions primarily CBC/Radio-Canada, fronted by Sun Media and its parent company Quebecor and I fear, orchestrated within the deepest recesses of the corridors of elected power.

Canada has changed incrementally since the election of January 2006. So it is outrageous that on at least six separate occasions since the election last May of Mr. Harper's first majority Conservative government it's seen fit and appropriate to limit legitimate democratic debate in the House of Commons on important (some critical) matters such as the Omnibus Crime Bill and all of its ramifications, cutting subsidies to political parties, cutting the powers of the Wheat Board and the Gun Registry.

They claim, as the parliamentary weekly newspaper "The Hill Times" reports this week, to be simply cleaning-up the backlash from 5 years of minority stalemate in Parliament so that..."they have an opportunity to hit the reset button and some time in 2012 come with a new Throne Speech that sets (Mr. Harper's) longer-term agenda." May Heaven help us!

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercise in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Canadian - American economist, John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)

NO TRICKS, NO TREATS!

In a couple of weeks on November 5, Canada's Ambassador to the United-States, Gary Doer, will be inducted into the 'Academy of Distinguished Canadians and Americans' at a black-tie gala dinner being held in Boston. Mr. Doer's largely ceremonial induction is the focus of an event sponsored by the "Maple Leaf Foundation," a non-profit organization which is dedicated to the advancement of understanding between Canada and the United-States.

It's a good time for the Ambassador and members of the foundation to enjoy this largely symbolic Boston ceremony. Though the 2012 face-off is already well engaged, there is  general acceptance in the U.S.A. that the post holiday season marks the official kick-off of the quadrennial Presidential election campaign. Most certainly in the case of next year's run for the Presidency that means essentially ignoring to another time (perhaps, another Administration) Canada's irritants about which (no doubt) both the Ambassador and the Foundation have been focused during the Obama years.

Always close to a deal, but not quite.

In spite of this age of globalism (or perhaps because of it) one can't help but be reminded of the accuracy of the decades old axiom about sharing the bed with an elephant. Except now, it turns-out the pachyderm is suffering for the outbreak of a hell of a pneumonia: Woeful unprecedented economic conditions amidst a political environment so poisonous that it, without exaggeration, has been tearing at the very fabric of the union. Until the fog of this chaos lifts, there will not be any time nor appetite to deal with Canada's issues.
Though from Canada's perspective our irritants may be monumental and frequently essential to the national well being, when viewed from the perspective of the morass which has befallen the nation with whom we share the continent, they are no bother. Much like the size of the iconic elephant, it just depends from which end of the telescope the examination takes place.

Because he virtually has no other choice on the jobs creation front back home, when President Obama okays construction of Trans-Canada's Keystone XL crude oil pipeline from the border south to Texas in a few days, a majority of Canadians will applaud the decision, and Mr. Harper's government will snatch credit for its economic impact in western Canada. But that's likely the last  acknowledgment of anything positive coming from north of the border until well after Americans decide who may be able to lead them out of their economic and political afflictions a year from now in November 2012.

Canada and Canadians it seems are just so nice that for the United-States, we are not a problem. So at the best of times, with or without the prospects of the bitter divisiveness of a presidential electoral face-off, no matter how friendly the relations continue to be, Canadians must wage a permanent campaign to even stay on the agenda. Though it is a substantial cause of concern for much of the world, the spectre of "protectionism" in all of its manifestations will play a significant role as the U.S. presidential campaign unfolds. We may just have to bide our time and hope for the best.

BORDER ACTION PLAN

In this country the Government of Prime Minister Harper has been fixated on affixing the "Action Plan" label to just about everything it's attempted since launching the $50+Billion rescue of the economy in the wake of the 2008 world financial collapse. No surprise then that in the absence of Mr.Harper's grand-vision of an integrated Canada-U.S. "Perimeter Security" deal as announced with fanfare last winter, the government will now take to calling the recently negotiated perimeter security lite - "Canada's Beyond The Border Action Plan."

Doubtless despite intense efforts from Canada's perspective; just about all that's been accomplished since the two sides began meeting in February is the establishment of a "working group" which will attempt to peel away at international layers of bureaucratic red-tape, and re-double efforts to establish better communications on matters relating to Customs levies and procedures, and most important to the United-States: Security issues.

That's a very far cry it seems from the Harper "big-vision" which up until just very recently his Government had hope to implement. And that's also why the Prime Minister's office has failed to convince authorities in Washington to make the President available for any announcement, let alone a signing ceremony of any sort. Just slightly more than a year out of the next Presidential elections in the United States the last thing the Obama Administration wants is to focus his moribund jobs creation record over improving cross-border trading relations with the neighbour north of the 49th parallel.

Fortunately perhaps for Mr. Obama's re-election efforts he's now far more likely to focus his attention on the Mexican neighbour south of the U.S. border in the wake of last week's failed alleged Iranian backed terror plot which Homeland Security claims to have been coordinated down Mexico-way.  On Tuesday last, President Obama himself announced that Iranian Forces had sought to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. by bombing a popular Washington restaurant with the help of Mexican desperadoes. Ay, Caramba! (As is frequently the case in such matters; details are sketchy).

Most Republican Presidential hopefuls in the United-States have seized on the matter to redouble demands that America must secure its southern border by sending more troops to the area, adding predator drone surveillance aircraft,  and building more fencing to separate the U-S border from Mexico. On Saturday Republican candidate and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann signed a a formal pledge committing that as President she will build a double fence across the entire border with Mexico before the end of 2013.

A Raleigh, North-Carolina group called "Americans for Securing the Border"is behind the pledge initiative. It's current focus is on matters related to the problems along the border with Mexico including drug smuggling, illegal immigration, human trafficking and in light of these most recent developments, potential terrorists. But the group's Chair and co-founder, a Washington defense lobbyist named Van D. Hipp, Jr has claimed in the past that the Government of the United-States has been derelict in its duty in defending the "borders".

When the U.S. House of Representatives defeated President Bush's proposed "guest worker programme" for undocumented immigrants in December 2005, the bill the House adopted ordered the Department of Homeland Security to obtain "complete operational control" of borders within 18 months, including studying the feasibility of erecting barriers on the border with Canada.  In follow-up reviews, (most recently in May 2011) the Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.), the U.S. Congressional watchdog, noted that in its opinion just 32 of the nearly 4000 northern border miles had reached an acceptable level of security.

Canada's focus remains on trade with our southern partner which is essential to our own economic security. The focus on border relations in the United-States seems to be from an altogether different perspective. I'm not quite sure we will ever see it with the same optic and intensity.