Attack from Above

The picture is absorbing. The fear is real. An attack from above from what must seem to them as an attack from space would feel for us. The Mars lander searches for signs of life on the red planet while a small plane flies over the tree canopy of the Brazilian Amazon jungle. The plane had made a pass above the village near the Brazilian/Peruvian border earlier in the day and the tribesman had obviously been put on war footing, dressed in warpaint and armed with bows and arrows. Although Peruvian president Alan Garcia, in his race for oil and logging, has openly questioned the possibility of such uncontacted tribes, it is estimated that about 100 such tribes do exist. Their fear of the unknown is apparent. Like a scene out of The Gods Must be Crazy they had no idea what this mechanical bird was or anything of it's intentions. Bodies painted, weapons at the ready, as if they knew that encounters such as this with the outside world almost always proved fatal to tribes like theirs.

The modern world's equivalent to these planes looking down on hidden tribes in the amazon are the thousands of satellites circling the globe doing everything from taking pictures to providing communication to searching for hidden oil. So what would happen if these satellites suddenly became offensive weapons with the ability to shoot down others or rain down destruction on Earth? This is part of a scenario described a few years back by a commission lead by none other than Donald Rumsfeld in what he called a “space Pearl Harbor”. When Rumsfeld was nominated to defence secretary, retired general David Jeremiah took over the commission chairmanship and said "Increasingly, people like Osama bin Laden may be able to acquire capabilities on satellites" and will be able to threaten US ground stations. Take note that this was just a few months before 9/11.

The subject has regained relevancy recently due to a couple of different factors. Firstly, the current Outer Space Treaty, signed and ratified by most countries including the US, China and the former Soviet Union, came into existence in 1967 and prohibits placing weapons of mass destruction in space but is vague when it comes to other weapons such as lasers or the shooting down of satellites. Which brings us to January of 2007. China became the third nation, after the US and Russia, and the first in 20 years to successfully shoot down an orbiting satellite. It was an obvious effort the force the Americans into dialogue over the militarisation of space, to stop an arms race in space, to which the US has consistently maintained that no such race exists. Of course they don't mention the fact that the national space policy of the US strongly asserts the American right to defend itself in space against any actions it considers hostile. Therefore the predictable response by the US to the Chinese action was to shoot down a "toxic" satellite themselves.

Control of space represents the ultimate military control of the high ground so it's not hard to see why this is such a touchy subject. What is difficult to figure out is why the American government seems so adamant in their refusal to enter into serious discussions to disarm this growing crisis. How does the old expression go...people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, yeah that's it. As usual though, the Bush administration has plenty of rocks that they're not afraid to throw. There isn't any military more technologically advanced than that of the USA, yet at the same time they are completely dependent on the information provided to them by the satellite system zipping around the globe. Knock a few of them out and before you know it they're fighting blind. So one would believe that they would jump at the chance to enter into a treaty guaranteeing their primacy in orbit.

How many American know that the nation refusing to discuss a treaty aimed at preventing an arms race in outer space is their own? The Russians want nothing more than to maintain a balance of power and China is definitely on board, both have made proposals. Dennis Kucinich has attempted to introduce legislation into congress. Even the Canadians have tried to bring it up. Instead the American are opting for the arms build up, a new space race as evidenced by their RAIDR project or space based kinetic missile interceptors. This is a game that China has demonstrated it is willing to play, and I'm sure the Russians will come along for the ride as well. There could be only one reason. Could it be that there is a fortune to be made in developing the technology to fight in space?

On Dollars and Dinars

50-Cent shoots a video featuring the Euro, the Canadian dollar trades for more than a U$ while oil zooms over $135/barrel. Since the Bretton Woods agreement over 60 years ago tying the value of the U$ to gold and all other currencies to the U$, the USA has been the unquestioned economic superpower. While the gold standard was abandoned, many nations have maintained some kind of peg to the value of the dollar and most of the world's commodities are priced in U$. It's becoming increasing clear however that this policy is adding to other nation's economic problems more that helping. Dollar flight has been underway for much of the decade, but the worst is yet to come.

Most of the world is still priced in dollars, from oil to rice, but the rising cost to other nations is threatening to end this system. From Russia to Kuwait, countries are cutting their ties to the greenback one by one. Why? Quite simply they've lost faith in it's value. Meanwhile the price of importing from other countries has risen, fueling inflationary pressure beyond “acceptable” levels. Russia abandoned it's effort to tie the ruble's movement to the dollar in 2005. The second largest exporter of oil also wants to sell it to Europe priced in euros. The Eurozone is the largest source of imports for OPEC nations, so a nation like Saudi Arabia pays more for, say, French oil equipment which is of course priced in ever more expensive euros. In gulf nations, where the economies are booming due to rising oil prices, they are also forced to cut interest rates in line with US central bank due to the dollar peg, further adding to inflation. I'm sure these countries see the vicious cycle of higher oil prices leading to higher US deficits leading to a weaker dollar leading to higher oil prices, so why do they keep the peg?

On May 21st, 2007 Kuwait cut it's peg to the US buck. One could almost feel the shiver going up the spine of the American economy that is so dependent on oil imports from the region. Remember Bush visiting the Middle East a few months ago to supposedly ask for more oil and to be seen as supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Well, he was politely refused the oil and the Israelis stepped up their military operations in the occupied territories and tightened it's blockade of Gaza just three days after Bush left Jerusalem. But what he did accomplish was an agreement to maintain the pricing of oil in US dollars, for now. Even with prices spiralling out of control, causing migrant worker riots in Dubai as inflation is at it's highest level in 19 years in the UAE and at 16 year highs in Saudi and Oman they are toeing the line. The question is how long will these countries be happy watching the value of their trillion dollar investment in US Treasuries and securities erode?

It's not hard to see why it's so important for the US to maintain the pricing system in dollars. Let's imagine for a moment a world where prices were in other currencies and currencies such as the Chinese yuan weren't tied to the dollar, something many would like to see change to address the trade deficit. Every day the US needs to borrow to keep running, to fight two losing wars, to buy more oil from the Middle East and buy more Chinese products. Much of this debt is financed by the Chinese and other foreign countries. So while the US is busy printing money and pushing the dollar down, they are driving the growth of China and the Middle East, helping push their currencies higher. This of course in turn makes it more expensive to borrow tomorrow as the comparative values of the foreign currencies and the dollar move in opposite directions. Now, the economic argument would normally be that currency valuations will eventually cause buying behaviour patterns to change, but America is addicted to both oil and Walmart, spelling doom for the economy.

In 1971 the Gold Standard was abandoned, leaving an economic system based on fiat money, where there is no commodity backing up the value of currency, only the faith that people have in its value. Shortly thereafter a deal was struck with the Saudi's to conduct oil transactions only in dollars, thus was born the petrodollar era. If oil suddenly stopped being traded exclusively in US bucks, the dollar would no longer serve as the international currency which would force the US to reduce its trade deficits by becoming an export nation again, something I don't see happening. The route they've chosen is to maintain the system with an iron fist. In September 2000, Saddam Hussein may have sealed his fate by announcing that Iraq was no longer going to conduct oil transactions in dollars. The often delayed Iranian Oil Bourse finally opened in February of this year (despite some cable problems) with petroleum trading for non-dollar currencies, hmmm, I wonder what will happen next?

Slow Motion Oil Spill

As a Canadian living abroad, I have to admit to being more than a little proud of pointing out some of the Canadianisms that are with all of us. Whenever a Canadian song comes on or a Canadian actor appears on the screen, I'm guilty of being the guy who has to say, “s/he's Canadian, eh!”. The maple leaf, a beaver, even a hockey game always make me smile. That's why today's post is so difficult to write. If someone were to ask you where the largest recoverable source of oil in the world was located outside of Saudi Arabia, what would you answer? Unfortunately, I'd have to answer that it, along with Celine Dion, is Canadian. Welcome to the biggest capital project underway on earth.

Having grown up in the capital of Alberta, Edmonton, I've always known of the existence of tar sands. Today, you're more likely to hear the term oil sands to describe the Florida sized reserve of oil trapped in dirt, sand and rock in the northern portion of my home province. It is actually deposits of bitumen, a molasses-like viscous oil that won't flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons. Essentially, it is oil trapped in the rock. Fortunately, for most our lives, the price of a barrel of oil has been under $30 a barrel which made extracting the oil from the muck an uneconomical proposal. Of course, 2008 has brought with it a new world energy order, one where oil companies have been given the green light to rape the world at any cost in order to keep America running.

So how is this goo extracted from the earth? There is the “easy” way, and the “hard” way. The easy stuff is near the surface, representing about 20% of the reserves. The topsoil is simply scraped away by huge excavators and the underlying tar sands are dug out and put in huge trucks and taken for extraction. It is steamed to extract the heavy bitumenous oils and piped to refineries. The hard way, for the remaining 80% that lies in sand too deep to be mined again involves steam. It is injected deep into the earth, loosening the bitumen, allowing the producers to draw it upward.

Searching for reliable information can be exasperating due to the fact that the federal and provincial governments have decided to give the oil companies themselves oversight over the environmental impact. A more extensive report on the cost can be found here if you have the time to study. A simple input/output analysis of extracting one barrel (1/8 of a ton) of usable oil is: (mostly 2006 figures)
Input:
-two tons of tar sands (yes about 16 times the weight of oil you'll get)
-two to four and a half, I've read as much as 3 to 7, barrels of water (yes, some is recoverable, most goes to tailage ponds, some of which can be seen from space)
-um, that's about 350 million cubic metres a year, twice the amount the city of Calgary uses
-one to 1.25 gigajoules of natural gas. The barrel of oil that will eventually be produced is about 6.227 gigajoules, so about a fifth is wasted off the top
-that's 1,000 cubic feet per barrel of oil, 20% of Canada's total natural gas production goes to the extraction process, and it still will need further refining
-does this remind anyone of reverse alchemy, turning gold into lead as we take a relatively clean burning fuel, natural gas, and turn it into crude oil?
Output:
- one barrel of oil (that will still require further refining and will eventually contain 6 times the carbon levels of conventional sweet crude)
- between 85 and 125 kg of CO2 simply from the extraction, with refining and ultimate use still to add much more (by comparison conventional oil extraction releases about 28.6 kg)
-these oil sands are centred in one is the boreal forest ecosystem which stores more carbon in its peat lands, soil and trees than any other ecosystem in the world, yes, including the tropical forests, that's why there's so much of this stuff. The lungs of North America are being ripped out to produce the destroyer
-the Athabasca River, Canada's longest river runs through the heart of the area has a experienced a runoff decrease of 50% in the 93.7% of the Athabasca Basin that is downstream of the Rocky Mountains.
-pollution as far downstream as the Peace-Athabasca Delta which drains 1/6 of Canada's water, causing mercury levels to rise 98% higher, a jump of 466% of dissolved arsenic and 114% in sediment arsenic
-seepage and plain old dumping into the water system creating cool looking mutant fish
-arsenic levels 453 times acceptable levels in moose meat from the region
-cancer clusters popping up in areas downstream, potentially 458 times higher rates than expected
-huge tailing ponds of used, dirty, toxic water that kills anything that lands on it
-an old fashion gold rush boom town, Fort McMurray, a place I've had the opportunity to visit. It was the middle of the summer, which due to it's northern latitude meant that I enjoyed a midnight sun of sorts as it never quite set. The population has doubled in the last 9 years to about 75,000 with a “shadow” population of 12,000 living in work camps, campgrounds or hotels. (With debilitating effects on the infrastructure link)
-fun for conspiracy theorists as the amount of cover up from these effects becomes known, lives destroyed, people dying. For an excellent article click here.

While most people probably think of Canada as an environmentally friendly country, they are not only allowing this to happen, but encouraging it, while the Americans are at least keeping the oil companies out of Alaska... strange dichotomy. One report called the fiasco a slow motion oil spill, which is essentially the game being played by the powers that be. As long as the oil can get pulled out of the ground fast enough, hopefully not enough people will notice what's going on. Oil companies are pouring money into the area on a mind-boggling scale. As of 2006 the Alberta government said it had issued leases for 4,264 oil sands projects covering 25,065 miles. New projects costing more than $100 billion are on the books for the region as production is expected to at least triple to 3 million barrels a day by 2015.

The Alberta provincial government says it has issued leases for 4,264 oil sands projects covering 25,065 square miles . It knows the oil industry, luring them to invest by only charging a 1% royalty until capital costs are recovered. New projects costing more than C$100 billion are on the books for the oil sands region and production is expected to triple to 3 million barrels a day by 2015. This is a government that also knows it's people, who in turn have kept the Conservative party in power since 1971. Over the years the Alberta government has shown the people that they are saving for the future by building the Heritage Trust fund and issuing occasional royalty cheques to the people. However, when you contrast what a country like Norway has done with it's resource wealth, it puts Alberta to shame. 32 years of savings equals $16.6 billion in Alberta, in Norway they have over 160 billion Euros! Environmental Defence calls the whole thing the most destructive project on Earth and it's hard to argue. From the huge toxic tailing ponds with earthen dams holding them back from the river, rivalled in size only by China's Three Gorges dam, which could burst any time and are continually seeping into the groundwater to the greenhouse emissions that have forced the entire country to abandon it's Kyoto commitments, it is a source of intense shame to any Canadian. More importantly it's could be the biggest danger to mankind in the entire world.

League of Democracies, Us vs Them

Picture it. John "McBush" McCain and Nicolas Sarkozy standing side by side. Except instead of wearing normal suits and ties, they're wearing superhero suits. I picture Super Sarkozy as Superman and McBush as Ironman. (Sorry Prime Minister Brown, I don't think you'll be around long enough to try on the tights) Yes, it's the new and improved Justice League, but this time it's called the League of Democracies. I have to admit, I missed it the first time and second time around. Apparently John "McBush, McWar" McCain gave a foreign policy speech a little over a year ago and yet again a couple months ago in which he advocated the establishment of a new League of Democracies. So what is it you may ask? Well, you take the countries who you like, you bring them all together, slap a name on it, something with democracy in it, and use it to forward your foreign policy goals. The first two questions that popped into my head were why would we need it and who would be included, let's take a look shall we.

The obvious answer to the why question is the necessity the McBush campaign feels to distance themselves from the disastrous foreign policy followed for the last eight years by George W Bush. The dangerous mix of the "war on terror" and the "global freedom agenda" has been an utter failure, leaving the world a more dangerous place than ever and the image of America in ruins and even Joe Voter is beginning to understand this. So, combining the attack of Obama's diplomacy strategy with the idea of a new "modern" UN to cope with global problems, Joe Voter sees new hope, all without having to talk to the enemy. A few excerpts from McWar's speech of over a year ago, a speech in which he quoted Hamilton, Truman, Madison, T. Roosevelt and Reagan!:
"...our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom, knowledge and resources necessary to succeed. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we must work to persuade our democratic friends and allies that we are right."
"like-minded nations working together in the cause of peace. The new League of Democracies would form the core of an international order of peace based on freedom. It could act where the UN fails to act, to relieve human suffering in places like Darfur. It could join to fight the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa and fashion better policies to confront the crisis of our environment... It could bring concerted pressure to bear on tyrants in Burma or Zimbabwe, with or without Moscow's and Beijing's approval."
All sounds pretty good, except for the fact that we already have a world body called the United Nations that's supposed to do all that. Looking past it's obvious flaws (hello security council veto power) wouldn't it make more sense to try to improve the model we already have, one that includes all nations, instead of excluding a whole group of nations from the process. Wouldn't this new league inevitably lead to the formation of an international counterweight, perhaps a real life axis of evil...?

Which brings me to question number 2, who would be part of this new league? I wonder how they would decide on membership. Do you think there would be a slumber party at the White House and McBush, Sarkozy, Merkel et al. would stay up all night talking about boys, I mean other countries, which ones would be just right? If we take the number of countries that McBush threw out there of 100, how would we decide which 100 nations are democratic enough to join? Maybe they'd draw up a chart similar to say the one use by the Economist in their democracy index, or maybe the freedom of the world scores compiled by Freedom House. Let's take the Economist's list as it's much easier to read. I guess the 28 "full" democracies would be no-brainer choices (Sweden at number 1 and Iceland at 2, damn, I've gotta get to Iceland some day, also the happiest people in the world). If we're to get anywhere near 100, we also have to assume the 54 "flawed" democracies also get in there bringing our total to 82. This is a leap of faith though as we've got such democratic heavies as Timor Leste and Mali in there, plus the fact that Palestine and Israel would have to find a way to play nice together. This "coalition of the willing" still needs another 18 member to get to a hundred, and the pickings are pretty slim from here on in, what the Economist terms "hybrid regimes". OK, maybe a Turkey, a Ghana or even Tanzania, but Iraq? or Kenya? of course not Russia, it comes in at 102.

The biggest flaw in the reasoning is the idea that just because they are democracies, these nations will share the same interests on different fronts and will be able to work together as a whole by this virtue. The UN has international legitimacy because every nation in the world participates in its decisions. Democracies' legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed, once they act outside their borders, no such legitimacy applies. Yes, the UN needs to be reformed and re-thought to meet the challenges of the 21st century, but I'll take it any day over the idea of a League of Democracies.

Crouching Bear, Snarling Dragon

The first foreign visit by a newly elected president is a highly symbolic gesture. I remember a few years ago, well almost eight long and torturous years in fact, shortly after Dubya was "elected", the uproar caused in Canada by the fact that his first trip abroad was to see Vicente Fox in Mexico instead of the traditional visit to his northern neighbour. It was seen as a deliberate snub to the Canadian government and a move towards the south as the previous three presidents had begun a tradition of smiling to the north first. So what can be read into Russia's newly elected President's first foreign diplomatic trip? This weekend Putvedev is visiting China.

Sino-Russian relations are possibly at an all-time high. Both economies are booming and both are looking to flex their muscle. Apart they are strong, together they hope to bring down American hegemony, a fact the hasn't been lost by any of the American presidential candidates, even if the electorate has missed it. Maybe if we weren't so inured to Dubya's failings it might have been a bigger part of the news coverage, but George W truly scored a triple crown of incompetence over the past couple months of foreign trips. In addition to being rejected by King Faud in Saudi Arabia in his request for more oil and trying to compare Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers in Israel he was also rebuffed by outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin in Sochi, on the Black Sea. So long Vladimir, remember me, I'm the guy who looked into your eyes and got a sense of your soul, let's be friends, let us point interceptor missiles your way. NO! Now, with Putvedev in China, along with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, they wasted no time signing a joint statement, marking the first time they have come together in denouncing the plan.

With the rise in US power since the end of the Cold War and fear of Islamic extremism in Central Asia, it should have come as no surprise that both Russia and China's unease would lead to closer ties. The Sino-Russian Treaty of Good Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation (yes, it's real name! Maybe I'll call it the SRTGNF&C),in 2001 marked a real turning point. Since then bilateral trade volume has surged from $10.67 billion in 2000 to $48.17 billion last year, with Putvedev stating a target of $60 billion for this year. Of that $48 billion, almost $7 billion of it is oil flowing into China, which will exponentially grow once the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline and its branch to China are completed. Of course all of this growth has been driven by the transformation of the USSR to capitalist Russia and the opening of the Chinese market to capitalism, as the west and especially America probably would have wished for 20 years ago. At the same time as buying Chinese goods and Russian oil, America has also done everything in it's power to improve their future prospects, seemingly investing in their future. While borrowing money mainly from China daily to fund a war whose most pronounced effect globally has been increasing terrorism and the price of oil from $25 to $135 a barrel. Driving the value of the dollar down, thus increasing the cost of importing, mainly from China to buy more crap and finance the debt. Oh, yeah, about that war on terror...

Ostensibly on the pretext of training for joint responses to terrorist threats (and extremism and separatism, hello Taiwan), the Russian and Chinese armies have been staging manoeuvres together since their inaugural Peace Mission 2005, a result of the war on terror and the aforementioned SRTGNF&C. The week of August 18-25 of that year saw joint war games involving 10,000 troops, cruise missile capable Russian heavy bombers and units of the army, navy, air force, marine airborne and logistics units from both countries. Week 2 saw an amphibious landing in Eastern China, not far from Taiwan. In what has been evolving towards an "anti-NATO" group, the SCO, or Shanghai Cooperation Organization (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), played host to more "anti-terror drills" in 2007 on an even grander scale. In addition, through this group, both China and Russia are seeking to increase their influence, and reduce American influence in Central Asia both economically and militarily. Not only are they securing oil supplies, they've gone so far as to demand the US military out of it's member countries, with Uzbekistan complying. Yes, the names may be unpronounceable, but they are important staging posts for the war in Afghanistan. Remember Nixon in China? Neither do I, but I've read that it was a trip designed to counter fears of Soviet hegemony in Asia, an attempt to enlist China's support in America's containment strategy. The present American administration seems to have done everything possible to push them together.

The American plan to balance this new alliance in Central Asia has been the velvet revolution idea, working off the successes in the Ukraine of the orange revolution and the rose revolution of Georgia. However, with the possible exception of Kyrgyzstan, it's been a complete failure, most notably in Uzbekistan where yet another American staged coup attempt went awry in 2005 in Andijan. Two other wild cards, both of whom are observer states in the SCO, are Iran and India. With Iran obviously tilting to the east, India's role of possible kingmaker is undeniable. Donald Rumsfeld might have said of the 2005 Peace Mission "...I guess I don't find it notable" and continued, "I mean, countries do that. We are obviously observing what's takes place, but I didn't see anything in it that was threatening to Taiwan or anyone else." However, America has taken notice, witness the latest good cop-bad cop game played by McBush and Bush before and during Bush's last visit with Putin in Sochi. The reality is, for those of us who missed it the first time around, a new cold war is definitely forming with most of the same players playing different roles.

Fear of the Other

Archaeologists tell us that the earliest human groups were small family-tribes consisting of about 30 to 50 individuals. It was the perfect number to achieve the balance between having the ability to move quickly and being able to defend themselves effectively in the fight for survival. In a sparsely populated world, these small groups rarely came into contact with each other, but when they did, they had to decide how they would react to this Other. Today's world sees many more potential meetings between groups, yet still we must choose how to react when faced with the Other. What kind of attitude should we have towards them? Should we throw ourselves in fury on those people who are different than us, build a barricade to keep them away, or get to know and understand them?

The headlines today are from South Africa, so we can can once again turn the page and know it doesn't affect us. Whether we're reading this in Europe, North America or even Australia we can feel comfortable in the knowledge that we won't have problems like those in the townships of Johannesburg and Cape Town where at least 42 foreigners have been killed in violence aimed at immigrants. The country that has styled itself as the Rainbow Nation, has seen more than 12 days of violence aimed at immigrant groups. It was thought that this kind of thing could only happen in Nigeria, or maybe the Congo, but the home of the Truth and Reconciliation commission has been witness to marauding groups of vigilantes hunting foreigners, burning their homes and even burning people. A spike in Zimbabwean immigration combined with the fact that the economic gains of the past decade haven't been shared equally among the population has led to violence and the worst is yet to come.

Yeah, well it is only an African phenomenon, right? Well, let's take Italy, a country that has a few skeletons in their closet when it comes to xenophobic hysteria, so you'd think they'd have learnt from past mistakes. In fact though, the country is on the brink of beginning a process of deporting Italian citizens because of their Roma heritage. As is often the case when a right wing populist movement wins an election, Berlusconi's party and their coalition partners won partially on a platform based on blaming the Others. Now, the people have begun to take matters into their own hands. In a scenario supposedly sparked by a 17-year-old Roma girl who supposedly tried to steal someone's baby, the people of Naples have risen up night after night, marching, chanting and burning the homes of the second-class citizen Roma population. What's worse is it seems they've been blocking firefighter's access to the blazes. It's an almost textbook example of directing the populations anger at a scapegoat as the city battles a huge waste collection problem. During the recent election campaign Berlusconi vowed to curb illegal immigrants, describing them as an “army of evil”. The government's response to the recent violence, well quite predictably, more measures to get rid of the "army". Army of evil you say, sounds familiar...

Meanwhile, in America, where they have been busy perfecting the policy of attack over dialogue, they are also embracing the idea of wall building, in this case to keep out the Mexicans. At the same time an election campaign, which could see the election of the first black president, drags on.

Why build a wall when your people need all the exposure to the outside world they can get? It's not to fight terrorists, as construction was begun well before 9/11, in 1994 in fact. It's to keep out the Other. The Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, The Maginot Line, even the rabbit fences of Australia were all overcome by the invaders they were designed to keep out. Over, under, around, through, a wall is just something to be overcome, and they always are. Another doomed barricade will surely be the planned missile shield whose only tactical value seems to be that it pisses the Other off. America has already wasted the past 8 years focusing their response on the first two reactions to the Other, what the world needs more than anything is someone to take up that risky third option, dialogue.

The Other is an easy target when people start getting nervous about their pocketbooks, or worse yet, the hole in their bellies. Throughout our history, mankind has always wavered between the options of war, wall building and dialogue when dealing with this Other. War is hard to justify, the encounter with the Other usually ends tragically with the imposition of one's beliefs on the Other. Wall building only serves to isolate without fixing the problems that lie underneath. In a world where we seem to be moving from a mass society to a new, global society 2.0, interconnectivity is becoming the new world order. Linked more than ever before electronically through communication and physically in terms of transport and movement, how we deal with the Other will only become more important, culturally and economically. A surge in oil prices, a spike in food prices, an economic slow down, fingers will be pointed, swords could be drawn, if we don't talk, who will be next to be blamed?

A New Democratic Process

Obama lights up, Hillary throws 'em back and McBush, well, he'd try anything to get elected come November. If only we had a better method of choosing the president of the USA than this democracy thing that has obviously gone awry. Anybody who still has faith in the system that elected George W. Bush president back in 2000 hasn't been paying attention. In an election campaign where it somehow matters whether one wears an American flag pin all the time, it has become clear that we need a new and improved method of resolving these annoying elections. My proposal is a drinking contest.

Flashback to August 2004, both Hillary Clinton and John McBush McCain find themselves part of a congressional delegation visiting Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Being in a Baltic country, what else could they do but partake in some of the local spirit, vodka. Well, the story goes that one thing leads to another and a shot contest develops between the two presidential hopefuls. True or not, the story ends with Clinton being the victor after around four shots each. Who knows when a situation may develop where the future President and his/her counterpart in Russia will be seated across from each other and the need to resolve a dispute evolves into a similar contest? Well, in case you missed it, Mrs. Clinton has demonstrated her shot taking ability in front of the cameras. Right before the Indiana primary, she had stopped for a drink and some pizza at a local den if iniquity when a shot of whiskey appeared before her. Now, there seems to be some problem with the fact that it was a shot of Crown Royal, the finest hooch from Canada, but the fact is she downed it like a champion.

Score one for Hillary. Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe there was a reason ol' George W won back in 2000... Try the Boozin' Bush quiz.