Those are typos not spelling errors. Now what drives me up the wall is Ian's inability to use effect and affect correctly.

So here's the thing. If you know what he means then forget about it. It's his style. Work with it. He and we are here to communicate ideas. As long as they get communicated then there is no need to complain.

happen because I have no editor, and write many thousands of words a week that are usually published immediately after I write them. Errors are bound to slip through. I don't, however, mind people pointing them out, so long as they aren't all self-righteous about it. (ie. when you used to write term essays, did you make mistakes? Did you have to go back and correct them? Any make it through for the prof to correct? Ever write the equivalent of 3 to 5 (or more) term essays a week, for months on end while also working at other jobs to make ends meet? Think you'd catch all errors then?)

Rhetorical questions Jeff, I know you get it. Just some perspective for those who wonder why the Ag, and especially long essayists like myself and Stirling, have all these errors.

Because we write a lot, publish almost immediately, and don't have line editors going over our work.

If anyone wants the job (which, other than my effusive thanks, would be publicly thankless), let me know. :) In the meantime I don't mind them being pointed out in comments (or you can PM me on the left hand side bar.) They may not get fixed for hours (ie. until I notice) but usually I'll fix'em. Very rarely I may disagree, especially on stylistic matters (there are some things I do, like use the passive voice, that I do deliberately against what is considered best practice.)

I gots the opinions but I ain't gots the grammar.

Gots a problem wiz dat?

It won't be done that way in the US, but it doesn't need to be. Many ways to skin a cat.

eom

Ian's busy enough - his nose is buried deep into American politics. It's up to Canadians like you and me to keep bringing the Canadian perspective. Although once in a blue moon he mentions Canada. :-)

has had less direct impact on my economic life than the recent devaluation of the US dollar.

... in part for the reasons outlined here. Harper is annoying but currently well kept in check. I think generally speaking most people here would recoil at an openly dictatorial regime in the US. But Canada would have to play an ugly appeasement game in order to not provoke outright aggression due to the growing dependance of the US on oil sand.

I am in the lucky position to be German so if Canada gets too uncomfortable I can move back to Europe, but clearly a dictatorship in the US will generally make this planet a less attractive place to live on and I still can not figure out where to order my spaceship.

The Harper minority government is very secretive and not well in check. The plans to fully integrate the U.S. and Canada and Mexico are moving along nicely. The Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting in Montebello PQ this August moved things forward without anything being made public. When the U.S. and/or Israel bombs Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is out of commission, NAFTA mandates that Canada and Mexico turn over all energy resources to the U.S. If Canada resists that mandate, it will be forcibly occupied. The TILMA agreement between BC and Alberta went into effect April 1, 2007 and is like NAFTA on crack and they're trying to get the same agreement in place in Atlantic Canada (I can't remember the name they're giving it right now).

Good article on the CBC website:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/macdonald/20071003.html

... especially the wording within NAFTA that mandates the surrender of energy resources or face forcible seizure.

NAFTA is a bad treaty but last I checked it is not insane.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting seems to be mostly concerned with creating common business standards and travel protocols. Stuff that happened in the EU long before it was the EU and we still don't have a common constitution there.

I am sorry I don't mind paranoia but this reads a bit hysterical to me. I am especially skeptical about your claims because they echo verbatim what the crack-pot right in the US fears about NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

does require that we give the US energy, actually. We can, however, get out of it with 6 months notice.

- assuming this is the right article - than it basically enforces a free market in energy. Meaning Canada can not restrict exports in times of a severe crisis.

As long as Canada maintains its own currency the downside to this can be somewhat mitigated by a strong loony.

6 month to get out of NAFTA is not a terrible long time. On the other hand if the US of A goes openly dictatorial Canada will have to engage in some form of appeasement until it can project enough of a military deterrent to no longer have to play along.

for a long time that we should have nukes. We're within sprint distance, but 6 months can be a long time.

Barring that I would reorganize the army as an insurgency/counter-insurgency force. The second the US army crossed the border, the majority of it would disband - walk out in civilian clothes with knowledge of where the caches are, with real IDs in different names, etc... Other parts would have different missions, including fall back positions to certain rural and wilderness areas; a last stand regiment for Ottawa (you need to go down bloody in one place to inspire the resistance) and so on.

Smart defense policy is about capabilities and interests - because capabilities and interests change a lot less often than "intentions".

Might never happen, but then a military succeeds best if it makes sure that war doesn't happen.

ive always wondered if we could count factors in the us in the event of a hypothetical war between the us and canada.
i mean not counting ex-pats in the us, could we count on americans resisting on our behalf, besides simply renewed political activism groups and protests would there be any armed groups?

ive always considered the subject something people just make a broad assumption of and it never goes into detail or looks for unexpected events.

Unfortunatelly, in the age of the political Neanderthals you need to carry the biggest stick you can get.

(On 2nd thought the Neanderthals probably don't deserve to be insulted like that.)

...about capabilities rather than intent that Canadian development of nuclear arms is a really bad idea, though superficially attractive. In isolation, a cogent argument could be made for the possession of nuclear arms, along the lines of the Chinese deterrence strategy (i.e., possession of "the minimum means of reprisal"). Were we located somewhere else in the world, I might even have some time for the argument, as an element of abstract theory (diligent readers will remember how much I detest nuclear weapons). However, the fact that we are located so close to the United States renders the issue moot. From their end they simply could not accept Canadian nuclear weapons, due to the extreme first strike capability.* The thought of a decapitating cruise missile shot down the throat from a Soviet SSN probably used to be the thing keeping the most strategic warfare folks up late into the night. Ground based weapons in Canada would pose a much worse threat. Personally, I can do without the additional strategic challenges faced by countries in this situation - i.e., Pakistan and the debate about what level of instability or intransigence one can accept before having to intervene to assure custody of nuclear weapons. Add to that all the additional factors such as high cost, undermining the fundamental cornerstone of our post-Cold War policy, and the necessity of developing effective delivery vehicles (again highly expensive) and they become a lot less attractive. An Iranian style faith in the strategic value of nuclear arms is a bad idea in the modern world, particularly when one is well integrated into international alliance structures.

In my view, if one wants to know what the true instrument of strategic influence is for a country in Canada's situation (and, frankly, for most western powers including the United States) look to the infantry. IMNSHO, for the foreseeable future what really matters is the ability to put highly trained, mobile, and survivable infantry on the ground at short notice and sustain them over long periods. Critically this infantry must be twinned with intelligence that is highly effective, with a deep understanding of the cultural terrain and indigenous languages. Not unsurprisingly, this force is very much what we are moving to - however, given the size of the int branch we're making much quicker progress on the former than the latter.

*Many may be saying at this point "but wait, Canada had nuclear weapons between 1963 and 1984". Not exactly - these weapons were actually in the possession of US personnel and required US authorization for release (i.e., the PAL codes). Given nuclear weapons surety procedures, the possibility of being able seize, hold, modify and use these things unilaterally without being first taken out is pretty much zero. (One might also want to note that the Canadian and US defense establishments of the day were much more joined at the hip than they currently are - there are numerous examples about of the Canadian defense establishment subverting orders from the political echelon that they thought stupid.)

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

any Canadian defense policy which doesn't deal with the only country which can invade and occupy us isn't much of a policy. It doesn't have to include nukes, but it does have to deal with that issue. If it doesn't, the military isn't doing its job and neither are the politicians. I ain't particularly interested in being able to put Canadian infantry quickly into American colonial wars that the US has neither the interest nor aptitude to win, so we just bleed a lot for zero gains.

Being the US's Finland isn't an attractive fate when the US is structural decline, a decline which in my judgement is likely to get much steeper but which even if it doesn't, isn't likely to be reversed soon.

...a) important and b) pretty much impossible to resolve. Near as I can tell, pretty much everyone has come to the conclusion that it is absolutely impossible to defend the country in conventional (or even unconventional) military terms, particularly against invasion from the south.

Geography-wise we are simply too spread out to defend effectively, particularly given the easy access to the Canadian population centres from the United States. Conversely, in population terms we're too concentrated to be easy to defend - the six largest population centres account for approximately 45% of the population, and the top 30 account for about 65%. All of this means that the number of MSRs required is low, they'll tend to be pretty short and relatively easy to defend, and any fight would likely concentrate in the population centres rather than rural areas. Two really nasty and probably determinative aspects of the conflict would be that: a) US forces are likely to be orders of magnitude more effective than they are in other environments - contrary to the situation in Iraq they speak the language and understand and have significant commonalities with the local culture, and b) we would be without significant external state military support. Both of these lead me to the conclusion that any way out would be political rather than military - and I think the political side would be aided by not inflicting major US casualties.

As to the American colonial wars element, I would tend to agree - all involvement should have multilateral backing, under the aegis of NATO or the UN or some other international alliance or be unilateral under the provisions of the responsibility to protect doctrine that we promulgated.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

Canada is almost made for an insurgency, actually. Sure the population centers are easy enough - but the prize is the resources - and those require thosuands of miles of easily disrupted infrastructure to get out. Other than a fight over Ottawa as a morale issue (maybe) I wouldn't fight conventionally at all, honestly.

And if the US attacked Canada, I think we'd be able to get a lot of aid from either Europe or China. An attack on Canada would break alliance structures to hell - I dobut Europe would tolerate it.

I agree an attack is unlikely. But I don't think it's unthinkable, and I hope there is contingency planning for it.

...we might actually be closer than 6 months out, which was a bit of a surprise to me. We currently hold approximately 1.3 tonnes of HEU - I suspect that a good chunk of that may actually be weapons grade (SLOWPOKE used to run on 93% enriched fuel). If we've the fissile material already, the development cycle might actually be shorter than 6 months if we're talking just a crude gun assembly that we're not that concerned about delivering efficiently. If we were to go the Pu route, I suspect that it would take much longer (both in terms of fuel production and engineering).

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

research North American Union.

... conspiracy crap on steroids. One thing is for sure such a union could hardly be any more undemocratic and f*** up than the good ole US of A.

It'll be shame for Canada though. At any rate I am quite happy with the European Union. Maybe Canada should rather try to join that club?

is twenty million more radical liberals, which from their perspective is what all but the most radical Canadian right-wingers are.

we don't know how right wing the Harper gang is until they get their majority. Playing left of centre is their strategy for toppling the true liberals - whether they be left of centre, centre or right of centre liberals.

Mr. Harper is a member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a conservative evangelical Christian group, and is generally considered to have socially conservative views on most issues. He opposes gay marriage and abortion and supports capital punishment. During the 2003 Iraq War his party was the only one in Canada that supported the United States and George W. Bush. In his past careers he has also been strongly critical of taxation, multiculturalism, constitutional concessions to Quebec, and socialized healthcare.

As Prime Minister, however, Harper has governed much more pragmatically. Canadian liberals often accuse Harper of being "right wing" and too similar to George W. Bush and American Republicans; analogies which are used to inflame anti-American sentiment in Canada. In the 2006 election Harper thus sought to distance himself from some of his strongly conservative positions of the past, usually by vowing to not persue a radical social agenda while in office, but instead focus on certain economic prorities.

Regardless, as a minority Prime Minister whose caucus is still outnumbered by left-wing parties, Harper's ability to govern as a true conservative has been somewhat limited. He has, however, introduced reforms limiting Canadian gun control laws and may be able to implement a more conservative set of policies if his party wins re-election with a majority of the seats in the Canadian parliament.
Source

His true conservatism is on hold right now

say, insituting a no fly list.

... a majority. He is harmless now but a in a majority he could become very dangerous. Although I give him the benefit of the doubt of not being Cheney.

competent than Cheney in some key ways, I think. Though not the bureaucratic master Cheney is.

Clearly Cheney's got lost long time ago. The Maher Arar apology gave me some hope that Harper may be more misguided and ideologically blinded rather than downright evil.

i missed this reply of yours here, and further down also mentioned lewis's book, It Can't Happen Here -twice even -second time echoing this very url -which has the full text of the book.... i'm glad for the errant redundancy, as an underscore.

they wouldn't be so fearful. Their own actions say "it's not too late"; their own evident fears are our instructors in strategy.

Go after them where they show fear - whether or not you see a surface logic to it. Loud poorly coordinated instant response = fear.

I'll keep what you said in mind.

just count the rats going over the rails. They know.

:D

For me the difference is in how centralized the organization. Feudal states are more decentered--more like warlords who rule over small sections of territory. Although Wikipedia has a good discussion and seems to indicate that there is a lot of debate over the use of the term.

but don't forget that technology today demands the ability to pay for the certification of those oaths of allegance.

cost him his Quebec breakthrough.