.
Awareness cloaked in fog
.
Tisdale
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
As I look back on the past few months, three big news stories have filled the airwaves and crowded out the space in print media. I would like to shed some light on each of these three topics because if you rely on the regular network news, or your mainline newspapers, there is a lot being left out and as they say, the devil is in the details. I am not sure that the details amount to more than the sum of their parts. but I do know, that the news of 2014 is hardly the reporting of facts, but it is much more likely to be the reporting of sensationalism and those elements of a story, that will catch emotions and may not necessarily reflect on just exactly what is going on.
Sexual impropriety
It is a given that despite all good intentions people sometimes act badly and in our culture, which runs back to the late middle ages, bad behaviour has become something a little more organised. In order to create a more civilised and workable society, bad behaviour has been sorted out so that somethings are considered bad manners, somethings shunned by society and controlled somewhat by gossip, but just below the level of being established in law as illegal. The British system of “Common Law” has seen the codification of bad behaviour and steadily redefined various bad behaviours in such a way that crimes are definable and punishable in our courts. This process is remarkably flawed and that's the reason there are lawyers and appeals courts, as the constant need exists, to establish the parameters of law and its enforcement.
Human sexuality is a very tricky thing, because of its innate complexity, as well as the involvement of religion and socially acceptable mores within the background of culture. Our Canadian legal system recognised that complexity and in the massive overhaul of the legal system carried out by Lester Pearson’s justice minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau a principle of separating the actionable law of the land and the privacy of human interaction. Trudeau stated that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”. Among the reforms he brought into law was to remove the word “rape” from the criminal vocabulary. This was a great idea, because it made it clear, that violence in a sexual context, was still violence and thereafter the term “sexual assault” came into being.
Now these reforms were not the only changes that came to law and sexuality during my lifetime, but the whole process of how victims were dealt with within the legal system and in court, has been altered to improve the effectiveness of Canada’s sexual assault laws. However, despite these improvements and apparent reforms, not much has changed during my seventy years of life. Few people, who have been sexually assaulted report the crime and of those few, it is extremely rare for a conviction to take place, unless the victim is killed, or maimed. There are many reasons for this whole litany of injustice, some of which is the pervasion of this being a male oriented society, our police forces are dominated by males and when it comes down to it in court, the accused “has the right to remain silent” while the victim is compelled to give evidence in the court and be cross examined by the defendant’s council. So it is, that even those involved in counselling sexual assault victims, will advise the victim to consider not reporting to police, or pressing for legal retribution.
I am sorry about this being such a lengthy preamble, but there is a need to have some back ground before we come to terms with the issues in the news.
More than twenty years before the emergence of the Internet into the society as a whole, Toronto University’s Marshal McLuhan published several books that not only discussed the affects of the Internet, but he put forth a concept of what the world would be like, he called the coming world “the global village.” The amazing thing is he went far beyond predicting what we have today as he mapped out the overwhelming power of what we call today “social media.”
The realisation that something is grossly wrong in our world of today has reached every corner of our society while some portions of the political spectrum have just chosen to ignore the problem. The people, both men and women, know that ridiculous inequality and life destroying bad behaviour abounds.
Twenty-five years ago an anti-feminist took a rapid firing rifle into a Montreal engineering school, he cleared the room of the men, then began shooting the women, simply because they were women. He claimed that when they finished their schooling, they would take jobs away from workers, who in the past were all men.
The Robert Pickton murderer of 49 Vancouver women, to the victims of the Prince George’s highway of tears, aboriginal woman across Canada have been killed and few of these murders have been properly investigated and properly prosecuted. In the case of Robert Pickton, the Police treated the series of killings with incredible lack of appropriate work and even went so far as to harass female officers working on the case. Meanwhile aboriginal leaders and the public in general have been demanding a full inquiry into the abnormally high incidence of attacks on First Nations women and girls, the government of Canada stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the need for such an inquiry.
During the past two years we have had to endure and share in the horror of teenage girls being exploited by their peers and internet trolls to the point of many of these girls reaching the realisation, that they could no longer go on in life and they killed themselves.
Compared to these situation described above, the scandal revolving around the sexual behaviour of popular and talented Jian Ghomeshi is relatively minor. CBC dismissed him from his job when they learned that he injured some of his sexual partners during sexual encounters. Though Ghomeshi declared that all of these encounters were “consensual” that simple can not be the case. a person might consent to sexual activity, but a person really can not give consent to be injured, so assault is just that, it is assault. He has now been formally charged.
The firestorm that came forth from the Ghomeshi case is truly extensive and you need to realise that this is only possible because of the age in which we live and the nature of technology today. The direct results of the disclosure of Ghomeshi’s inappropriate behaviour was that a parade of women began reporting that they too had been victims of this man and the details flowed. Then two NDP members of the federal parliament made discrete complaints to the leader of the Liberal party that Liberal MPs had acted badly toward them and Justin Trudeau promptly ejected the two MPs from the Liberal caucus. Sadly, there is no workable system legal, or otherwise to deal with this kind of issue and the case like the Ghomeshi situation is being dealt with in the social media.
Bill Cosby is one of the true icons of American comedy and culture. He is enormously successful with a comedy carrier with live performances, recordings, television and is widely revered by all. But with the stunting revelation about Jian Ghomeshi, who has a really large following in the United States, Ten days before the story about Ghomeshi broke, in a stand up comedy routine, comedian Hannibal Buress on October 16 condemned Bill Cosby as a rapist. That story exploded when the Ghomeshi case began to take shape. Since then the reports naming names and telling the seedy details have followed so that Cosby is effectively Internet tarred and feathered. The interesting thing about the Cosby case is that almost all of the accusations can not proceed to criminal, or civil court, because of the statute of limitations on such cases in the United States.
What we are witnessing is the return to the village of long long ago. Bad behaviour, once identified as serious enough, the village would shun the perpetrator and if serious enough, he would be banished from the society. In a survival situation, banishment was almost the equivalent of a death sentence. Today in our global village, the laws of our land simply can not deal with sexual bad behaviour, though we have tried to make them work, they are a failure and now it is time to reestablish the village and do things person to person, to attempt to control behaviour that is unacceptable.
The two Ottawa members of parliament have been accused and their punishment is being administered by the public at large. They will not face a court, or hearing by their peers, they stand accused and society has spoken.
As you consider this development, you will immediately realise, that such a public process is inherently dangerous and filled with possible abuses. However, let me tell you about the legal process in merry ole England.
When a modern day woman in the UK brings a complaint to the attention of the police she is not encouraged to press forward with legal remedies, even the rape specialists advise victims against such action and with good reason. When a women attempt to get charges against a possible rapist the police attempt to get evidence and pass that on to the prosecutor’s office and a decision is made if a conviction is possible. This means that of such complaints, only a handful proceed forward and those that are deemed unprosecutable, are often turned back to the police and the complaint is then charged with “perverting the course of justice” and during the last five years 109 have been jailed. No wonder only 28% of the rape cases reported to police are sent to the crown prosecution service. In one case a 23 year-old woman who suffered from a bipolar was charged after her assailant launch a private prosecution and three days before her trial was to begin she took her own life.
The emergence of the police state
Polarisation is now a fact of life in North America. Our societies on both sides of the border are dramatically now in a “we/they” situation. Here in Canada, our major political parties attempted to encompass within them, a wide range of views and societal conditions, this was the big tent approach and it was extremely successful. However, in 2003 the reform party lead by Stephen Harper changed all of that by merging the reform party and the Progressive Conservative party. The big tent version of politics of the Progressive Conservatives was expunged and replaced by 100% partisanship, where only the views of the party leader were accepted. This mirrored the sort of thing that has been growing in the United States during the Bush years, which altered the Republican party so that it too, was no longer a big tent, but was dedicated to the destruction of debate and democracy and the “we/they” world came to pass.
The polarisation in North America is profound, it is rich and poor, black and white, Christian versus all others, Conservatives Party versus Indians, ideology versus science, the list goes on and it is remorseless. In the states, the news media has chosen sides and all things are either governmentally correct, or the Fox channel view. Such a climate is not sustainable and it is truly uncivilised. Ultimately, without compromise there is no point in discussing anything, when everything is reduced to power. Clearly, resistance by whatever means is the only alternative.
It surprises me that supposed intelligent people would reject the democratic norms of our society when the only alternative to civilised behaviour is violent uprising.
The Tea Party and the Republican party can not accept that a black man is the president of their country. America was founded on slavery and has never ever been a land of the free and the home of the brave, it is based on power and guns. When they first realised that they had a black man as their president they attempted to prove that he was not a legal president because he was not born in the United States, he was born in Hawaii and clearly that must mean he wasn’t an American. Since then, the lines of hardened and so has the wealth of the country stretched, so that the divide between have and have nots has never been so extreme. The poorest of the poor are the ancestors of Americas slaves and the police of the country are overwhelmingly European.
In Florida a black man, Trayvon Martin, was shot and killed by a man for no apparent reason. In Ferguson Missouri a black man is shot and killed by a policeman waving his hands in the air crying “don’t shoot”. In Cleveland and kid is shot and killed by police waving a BB gun in his hands, family man shot and killed in Ohio Walmart holding a BB gun in a state where it is legal to openly carry the real thing and in New York a black man selling cigarettes on the street is choked to death by a group of New York’s finest as the dying man gasps “I can’t breath.”
In all of the cases above there are no consequence for the killers, only black men are killed, just has they always have been, in the United States is seems to be the plight of slavery.
We in Canada are following the same path. Our government is completely unaccepting of the treaty rights established between the Crown and the First Nations people. Each year police in this country kill First Nations people and claim they feared for their lives, almost all of them go free. Aboriginal women and girls in Canada are three times more likely that non-aboriginals to be victims of violence. Police action, or inaction on the treatment of First Nations people is a matter of national disgrace.
Once again I must remind you that without hope, violence by the oppressed, is inevitable. We in Canada should be extremely proud of the First Nations people, who up until now, make up the majority of our jail population and have not taken up arms to defend themselves, even though this is their land and they have above average privileges assured to them in their treaties. How much loner can we expect them to accept the conditions under which they live and die.
South of the border the situation for the blacks, hispanics and others of colour, is simply unsustainable. At some point they must in an effort to defend themselves, rise up and fight back against the police state, in which they now find themselves now trying to live.
Geo-global confrontations
Two very big and nasty wars are currently underway and we the people of Canada are clearly in jeopardy.
The George W. Bush adventure and illegal war in Iraq with the CIA’s abhorrent widespread use of torture has resulted in the formation of a well funded, well armed force, having grabbed control of more than half of Iraq and perhaps three quarters of Syria. They are called by several names; ISIS, ISIL, Da’ish, Jihadist to name a few and they include fanatical Sunni believers from all parts of the world including our own who have joined in a cause to create a Caliphate which would claim religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide.
The Government of Canada sent a small force of about sixty people to train Kurdish soldiers to fight in this conflict, then sent seven CF18 fights and support aircraft to participate in aerial attacks coordinated by the United States.
By the admission of the military leaders involved no success is expected in this campaign.
Meanwhile Russia has invaded the Ukraine. It annexed Crimea and now is fighting a not to subtle guerrilla war in the eastern portion of the country. No one expects Ukraine to be able to stop Russia’s actions and it will be for them alone to decide what the outcome will be.
For our part, as apart of NATO, we have four CF 18s patrolling the skies of the Baltic sea, to thwart incursions into NATO countries by Russian aircraft. At this point NATO airforces including contingents from the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany have been keeping the peace in the area.
At a recent summit our prime minister said to Russian President Vladim Putin “ I might as well shake your hand but get out of the Ukraine.” That would seem like pretty undiplomatic language for a Canadian Prime Minister. The Minister of External affairs has stated in Kyiv that Canada will support and act to defend the Ukraine.
Canada has one of the weaker military forces in the developed world. About sixty-four fighter aircraft, almost no navy and two divisions of infantry. Is it reasonable to be acting like we are some world superpower either in the Middle East or making provocative comments to our northern neighbour, a neighbour with one of the biggest military budgets, countless soldiers, a massive airforce and a nuclear first strike missile capability more capable then our neighbour to the south.
All of this is just a matter of posturing in the real world there are real things happening. The fall in the price of oil is no more related to the law of supply and demand now then it was in the 1970. The death spiral of the price of crude oil is a geo-political action and at this point we really don’t know who is the primary actor or actors. The goal is to smash the Russian economy which is very dependent on oil exports and as a supporter in Syria the Saudis have millions of reasons to see Russia’s power and wealth diminish. America sees the fall in oil prices as a good thing for their indebted economy. It is very likely that we have a conspiracy on our hands here and our Canadian economy is collateral damage. While these conspiracy theories make interesting coffee row chatter there is a distinct possibility the fall in oil prices is cause by a problem with US junk bonds.
As 2014 moves toward its end we definitely need very badly peace on earth and good will toward men (and women).
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
As I look back on the past few months, three big news stories have filled the airwaves and crowded out the space in print media. I would like to shed some light on each of these three topics because if you rely on the regular network news, or your mainline newspapers, there is a lot being left out and as they say, the devil is in the details. I am not sure that the details amount to more than the sum of their parts. but I do know, that the news of 2014 is hardly the reporting of facts, but it is much more likely to be the reporting of sensationalism and those elements of a story, that will catch emotions and may not necessarily reflect on just exactly what is going on.
Sexual impropriety
It is a given that despite all good intentions people sometimes act badly and in our culture, which runs back to the late middle ages, bad behaviour has become something a little more organised. In order to create a more civilised and workable society, bad behaviour has been sorted out so that somethings are considered bad manners, somethings shunned by society and controlled somewhat by gossip, but just below the level of being established in law as illegal. The British system of “Common Law” has seen the codification of bad behaviour and steadily redefined various bad behaviours in such a way that crimes are definable and punishable in our courts. This process is remarkably flawed and that's the reason there are lawyers and appeals courts, as the constant need exists, to establish the parameters of law and its enforcement.
Human sexuality is a very tricky thing, because of its innate complexity, as well as the involvement of religion and socially acceptable mores within the background of culture. Our Canadian legal system recognised that complexity and in the massive overhaul of the legal system carried out by Lester Pearson’s justice minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau a principle of separating the actionable law of the land and the privacy of human interaction. Trudeau stated that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”. Among the reforms he brought into law was to remove the word “rape” from the criminal vocabulary. This was a great idea, because it made it clear, that violence in a sexual context, was still violence and thereafter the term “sexual assault” came into being.
Now these reforms were not the only changes that came to law and sexuality during my lifetime, but the whole process of how victims were dealt with within the legal system and in court, has been altered to improve the effectiveness of Canada’s sexual assault laws. However, despite these improvements and apparent reforms, not much has changed during my seventy years of life. Few people, who have been sexually assaulted report the crime and of those few, it is extremely rare for a conviction to take place, unless the victim is killed, or maimed. There are many reasons for this whole litany of injustice, some of which is the pervasion of this being a male oriented society, our police forces are dominated by males and when it comes down to it in court, the accused “has the right to remain silent” while the victim is compelled to give evidence in the court and be cross examined by the defendant’s council. So it is, that even those involved in counselling sexual assault victims, will advise the victim to consider not reporting to police, or pressing for legal retribution.
I am sorry about this being such a lengthy preamble, but there is a need to have some back ground before we come to terms with the issues in the news.
More than twenty years before the emergence of the Internet into the society as a whole, Toronto University’s Marshal McLuhan published several books that not only discussed the affects of the Internet, but he put forth a concept of what the world would be like, he called the coming world “the global village.” The amazing thing is he went far beyond predicting what we have today as he mapped out the overwhelming power of what we call today “social media.”
The realisation that something is grossly wrong in our world of today has reached every corner of our society while some portions of the political spectrum have just chosen to ignore the problem. The people, both men and women, know that ridiculous inequality and life destroying bad behaviour abounds.
Twenty-five years ago an anti-feminist took a rapid firing rifle into a Montreal engineering school, he cleared the room of the men, then began shooting the women, simply because they were women. He claimed that when they finished their schooling, they would take jobs away from workers, who in the past were all men.
The Robert Pickton murderer of 49 Vancouver women, to the victims of the Prince George’s highway of tears, aboriginal woman across Canada have been killed and few of these murders have been properly investigated and properly prosecuted. In the case of Robert Pickton, the Police treated the series of killings with incredible lack of appropriate work and even went so far as to harass female officers working on the case. Meanwhile aboriginal leaders and the public in general have been demanding a full inquiry into the abnormally high incidence of attacks on First Nations women and girls, the government of Canada stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the need for such an inquiry.
During the past two years we have had to endure and share in the horror of teenage girls being exploited by their peers and internet trolls to the point of many of these girls reaching the realisation, that they could no longer go on in life and they killed themselves.
Compared to these situation described above, the scandal revolving around the sexual behaviour of popular and talented Jian Ghomeshi is relatively minor. CBC dismissed him from his job when they learned that he injured some of his sexual partners during sexual encounters. Though Ghomeshi declared that all of these encounters were “consensual” that simple can not be the case. a person might consent to sexual activity, but a person really can not give consent to be injured, so assault is just that, it is assault. He has now been formally charged.
The firestorm that came forth from the Ghomeshi case is truly extensive and you need to realise that this is only possible because of the age in which we live and the nature of technology today. The direct results of the disclosure of Ghomeshi’s inappropriate behaviour was that a parade of women began reporting that they too had been victims of this man and the details flowed. Then two NDP members of the federal parliament made discrete complaints to the leader of the Liberal party that Liberal MPs had acted badly toward them and Justin Trudeau promptly ejected the two MPs from the Liberal caucus. Sadly, there is no workable system legal, or otherwise to deal with this kind of issue and the case like the Ghomeshi situation is being dealt with in the social media.
Bill Cosby is one of the true icons of American comedy and culture. He is enormously successful with a comedy carrier with live performances, recordings, television and is widely revered by all. But with the stunting revelation about Jian Ghomeshi, who has a really large following in the United States, Ten days before the story about Ghomeshi broke, in a stand up comedy routine, comedian Hannibal Buress on October 16 condemned Bill Cosby as a rapist. That story exploded when the Ghomeshi case began to take shape. Since then the reports naming names and telling the seedy details have followed so that Cosby is effectively Internet tarred and feathered. The interesting thing about the Cosby case is that almost all of the accusations can not proceed to criminal, or civil court, because of the statute of limitations on such cases in the United States.
What we are witnessing is the return to the village of long long ago. Bad behaviour, once identified as serious enough, the village would shun the perpetrator and if serious enough, he would be banished from the society. In a survival situation, banishment was almost the equivalent of a death sentence. Today in our global village, the laws of our land simply can not deal with sexual bad behaviour, though we have tried to make them work, they are a failure and now it is time to reestablish the village and do things person to person, to attempt to control behaviour that is unacceptable.
The two Ottawa members of parliament have been accused and their punishment is being administered by the public at large. They will not face a court, or hearing by their peers, they stand accused and society has spoken.
As you consider this development, you will immediately realise, that such a public process is inherently dangerous and filled with possible abuses. However, let me tell you about the legal process in merry ole England.
When a modern day woman in the UK brings a complaint to the attention of the police she is not encouraged to press forward with legal remedies, even the rape specialists advise victims against such action and with good reason. When a women attempt to get charges against a possible rapist the police attempt to get evidence and pass that on to the prosecutor’s office and a decision is made if a conviction is possible. This means that of such complaints, only a handful proceed forward and those that are deemed unprosecutable, are often turned back to the police and the complaint is then charged with “perverting the course of justice” and during the last five years 109 have been jailed. No wonder only 28% of the rape cases reported to police are sent to the crown prosecution service. In one case a 23 year-old woman who suffered from a bipolar was charged after her assailant launch a private prosecution and three days before her trial was to begin she took her own life.
The emergence of the police state
Polarisation is now a fact of life in North America. Our societies on both sides of the border are dramatically now in a “we/they” situation. Here in Canada, our major political parties attempted to encompass within them, a wide range of views and societal conditions, this was the big tent approach and it was extremely successful. However, in 2003 the reform party lead by Stephen Harper changed all of that by merging the reform party and the Progressive Conservative party. The big tent version of politics of the Progressive Conservatives was expunged and replaced by 100% partisanship, where only the views of the party leader were accepted. This mirrored the sort of thing that has been growing in the United States during the Bush years, which altered the Republican party so that it too, was no longer a big tent, but was dedicated to the destruction of debate and democracy and the “we/they” world came to pass.
The polarisation in North America is profound, it is rich and poor, black and white, Christian versus all others, Conservatives Party versus Indians, ideology versus science, the list goes on and it is remorseless. In the states, the news media has chosen sides and all things are either governmentally correct, or the Fox channel view. Such a climate is not sustainable and it is truly uncivilised. Ultimately, without compromise there is no point in discussing anything, when everything is reduced to power. Clearly, resistance by whatever means is the only alternative.
It surprises me that supposed intelligent people would reject the democratic norms of our society when the only alternative to civilised behaviour is violent uprising.
The Tea Party and the Republican party can not accept that a black man is the president of their country. America was founded on slavery and has never ever been a land of the free and the home of the brave, it is based on power and guns. When they first realised that they had a black man as their president they attempted to prove that he was not a legal president because he was not born in the United States, he was born in Hawaii and clearly that must mean he wasn’t an American. Since then, the lines of hardened and so has the wealth of the country stretched, so that the divide between have and have nots has never been so extreme. The poorest of the poor are the ancestors of Americas slaves and the police of the country are overwhelmingly European.
In Florida a black man, Trayvon Martin, was shot and killed by a man for no apparent reason. In Ferguson Missouri a black man is shot and killed by a policeman waving his hands in the air crying “don’t shoot”. In Cleveland and kid is shot and killed by police waving a BB gun in his hands, family man shot and killed in Ohio Walmart holding a BB gun in a state where it is legal to openly carry the real thing and in New York a black man selling cigarettes on the street is choked to death by a group of New York’s finest as the dying man gasps “I can’t breath.”
In all of the cases above there are no consequence for the killers, only black men are killed, just has they always have been, in the United States is seems to be the plight of slavery.
We in Canada are following the same path. Our government is completely unaccepting of the treaty rights established between the Crown and the First Nations people. Each year police in this country kill First Nations people and claim they feared for their lives, almost all of them go free. Aboriginal women and girls in Canada are three times more likely that non-aboriginals to be victims of violence. Police action, or inaction on the treatment of First Nations people is a matter of national disgrace.
Once again I must remind you that without hope, violence by the oppressed, is inevitable. We in Canada should be extremely proud of the First Nations people, who up until now, make up the majority of our jail population and have not taken up arms to defend themselves, even though this is their land and they have above average privileges assured to them in their treaties. How much loner can we expect them to accept the conditions under which they live and die.
South of the border the situation for the blacks, hispanics and others of colour, is simply unsustainable. At some point they must in an effort to defend themselves, rise up and fight back against the police state, in which they now find themselves now trying to live.
Geo-global confrontations
Two very big and nasty wars are currently underway and we the people of Canada are clearly in jeopardy.
The George W. Bush adventure and illegal war in Iraq with the CIA’s abhorrent widespread use of torture has resulted in the formation of a well funded, well armed force, having grabbed control of more than half of Iraq and perhaps three quarters of Syria. They are called by several names; ISIS, ISIL, Da’ish, Jihadist to name a few and they include fanatical Sunni believers from all parts of the world including our own who have joined in a cause to create a Caliphate which would claim religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide.
The Government of Canada sent a small force of about sixty people to train Kurdish soldiers to fight in this conflict, then sent seven CF18 fights and support aircraft to participate in aerial attacks coordinated by the United States.
By the admission of the military leaders involved no success is expected in this campaign.
Meanwhile Russia has invaded the Ukraine. It annexed Crimea and now is fighting a not to subtle guerrilla war in the eastern portion of the country. No one expects Ukraine to be able to stop Russia’s actions and it will be for them alone to decide what the outcome will be.
For our part, as apart of NATO, we have four CF 18s patrolling the skies of the Baltic sea, to thwart incursions into NATO countries by Russian aircraft. At this point NATO airforces including contingents from the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany have been keeping the peace in the area.
At a recent summit our prime minister said to Russian President Vladim Putin “ I might as well shake your hand but get out of the Ukraine.” That would seem like pretty undiplomatic language for a Canadian Prime Minister. The Minister of External affairs has stated in Kyiv that Canada will support and act to defend the Ukraine.
Canada has one of the weaker military forces in the developed world. About sixty-four fighter aircraft, almost no navy and two divisions of infantry. Is it reasonable to be acting like we are some world superpower either in the Middle East or making provocative comments to our northern neighbour, a neighbour with one of the biggest military budgets, countless soldiers, a massive airforce and a nuclear first strike missile capability more capable then our neighbour to the south.
All of this is just a matter of posturing in the real world there are real things happening. The fall in the price of oil is no more related to the law of supply and demand now then it was in the 1970. The death spiral of the price of crude oil is a geo-political action and at this point we really don’t know who is the primary actor or actors. The goal is to smash the Russian economy which is very dependent on oil exports and as a supporter in Syria the Saudis have millions of reasons to see Russia’s power and wealth diminish. America sees the fall in oil prices as a good thing for their indebted economy. It is very likely that we have a conspiracy on our hands here and our Canadian economy is collateral damage. While these conspiracy theories make interesting coffee row chatter there is a distinct possibility the fall in oil prices is cause by a problem with US junk bonds.
As 2014 moves toward its end we definitely need very badly peace on earth and good will toward men (and women).
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.
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