Afghanistan - Journalism

A Canadian soldier in Afghanistan radios for assistance while others attend a fallen comrade. (Reuters photo)

Reporters Without Borders has a highly critical report on the dangerous occupation of being a journalist in Afghanistan. Recently, there has been an increase of violence against the Press in Afghanistan. President Karzai is doing very little to help combat it, and in addition, RWB reports international military forces are also guilty of obstructing the work of independant journalists. In other words, the public's ability to gauge the success rate of the international effort, is extremely compromised.

One must remember, reports from 'official', embedded journalists are highly edited by the military, and/or Defense Department. They are created to be Government-friendly. As we can presume, they can offer little to the public in way of a firsthand testimony as to how they perceive who's actually 'winning', or how  the overall international forces strategy really is working out. I say this for good reason, since on one hand, Pakistan continues to accept money and arms from the U.S., but then turns around and protects it's Taliban controlled Tribal Region. A no-win situation. Good for arms sales though...

Three More Canadian Soldiers Dead in Afghanistan; Two Injured

It was just another day in Afghanistan, and another group of our guys traveling in an armored carrier became the newest victims of yet another IED (Improvised Explosive Device).

When I was a grunt (infantryman) in the Canadian Armed forces, we were trained  how to look for buried land mines if you found yourself in a situation without other resources such as metal detectors at your disposal. We were instructed to crawl on our bellies with our bayonets held in our outstretched hands, and slice gently through the ground ahead of us, using a very shallow angle of entry.

We did this slowly, methodically, and very carefully! Once we felt our blades come up against an object in the ground, we immediately gave a signal to our rearward man who moved in with a metal detector (the metal detector was available here for training purposes) to determine whether it was a buried device, or just a rock.

But, this is no way to make time going through a minefield! This method is excruciatingly slow, and dangerous. But it's what we were trained to do, if once again you found yourself with no other choice than to use this method.

But, I can assure you when I state the following: Modern day warfare, especially the type of guerrilla insurgency as fought by the Afghanistan Taliban has drastically reduced the odds of even an extremely well trained soldier surviving the real dangers of hidden IED's; (and this is coming from an ex-soldier that was a crack shot, trained in an array of battle strategies, physically able, and with an eye for details).

I feel the West's, brave, young men and women today, soldiers who wish to serve under the decisions their nation's politicians have made, have been put into an impossible situation. You can be the best soldier in the history of the Army, but if the armored vehicle you are traveling happens to go over a recently buried mine, and all it takes is a pre-paid disposable cell phone to set it off, then it's obvious you're not much better off than a sitting duck!

BTW, Its reported this particular last group of Canadian soldiers were ironically returning from defusing another IED.

Property Tax Hikes...Again

The New Brunswick Flag

The golden lion is a British Coat of Arms holdover, while the ship signifies NB's shipbuilding and seafaring heritage.

As anyone who feels a sense of fondness and concern for where they live, this is why I am very concerned for what is happening here in New Brunswick.

New Brunswick is similiar to the state of Maine in character in that we have traditionally had a lower income per/capita than in other parts of Canada or the U.S. I am aware that California has already raised its states taxes, but this is not California! The average income in New Brunswick is an already low $37,500. As a direct result of this, housing prices have remained relatively cheap here in comparison. This has been traditionally true of the Maritime provinces as a whole, and has given rise to a typical Maritime expression, as well as elsewhere I'm sure, of 'living close to the bone'.

And, similar to Maine, we have been losing our population over the years, as families shrink in size due to: the higher cost of living; the overall pay scale compared with other places which take people away; and we don't as yet have enough immigrants of any particular nationality living here to attract others from their homelands to create their cultural centers as they already have done in larger cosmopolitan areas to make up for the difference. Top it all off, our New Brunswick age demographic is ever increasing, as the younger people keep leaving for greener pastures.

And of course New Brunswick also suffers from a contemporary moral issue that many other jurisdictions are forced to put up with: while most politicians, and some CEO's of public utilities are overly compensated, (10 times the average income plus a bonus of nearly 3 times again) the rest of the everyday, middle class citizenry are more or less told to eat cake.

In some towns such as Quispamsis (Quis/ pam/ sis) which is not far from where I am, they've seen a property tax jump of 17.3%!
You can only imagine what the older folks are thinking while they look at their decimated investment portfolios they'd been previously relying on to retire with!

The following is a Letter to the Editor I sent today to The Saint John newspaper; 'The Telegraph Journal', after this year's property tax increases were sent out. There is a 250 word limit to these letters.

Here it is:

'Warning! There is a wide spread system failure in the making in New Brunswick! Property tax assessments have just been released, and very similar to last year's assessment hikes, this year's assessments have increased by an average of 7.4%!Does the average citizen's wage go up this much on an annual basis? The simple answer is: Of course not!

Then why does the current Graham administration in Fredericton not see the pure folly of this ill conceived policy of squeezing additional funds out of an already beleaguered citizenry in this era of economic uncertainty?

And why does the Graham government bother to put on a public charade of attempting to repatriate New Brunswickers who have already left, in order to buoy our sagging population? Why bother? What could you possibly say to them that would make any financial sense? C'mon back, maybe you'll find a decent paying job, and maybe you won't. Our wages are traditionally lower than in other parts of the country, and to top it off, we just raised the cost of living...again. But hey, c'mon back, we miss you? You can just imagine what these people will be thinking. Thanks, but no thanks.

The reasons for poor public policies are usually attributable to the lack of moral character of their administrators. Is our current premier just another politician looking to pay for status quo government expenses any way he can? And, is the visionary stuff of much greater, benevolent statesmen simply beyond his abilities?

A footnote here...Graham was not re-elected as the  premier of New Brunswick, but this was due mainly to his nonsensical approach of attempting to shove the people of New Brunswick around in other ways...

David Sanger - Who Actually Runs The Show in the U.S.?

I do like how David Sanger's new book sounds; "The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power"

In a few words: Obama has inherited a disaster in the making.

The world's currently in a mess because too many impressionable minds gave Bush more credit than he was due, and so allowed the Bush & Cheney regime to operate far too long with impunity.

Under their rule, just as with other dictators in many parts of the developing world, the military has become a multiple-interest business. The American Military Industrial Complex has become more than bloated, it has become a contagious disease infecting the minds of otherwise intelligent people, including members of Congress who are happy to report they have landed needless, but outrageously expensive, military contracts for their constituents back home.

Along the path of this particular job growth however, the goal to increased militarization only fosters new, and unpredictable paranoia to the American culture as a whole, including a new McCarthyism in which voicing an alternate opinion has been perverted by the Republican-right's media influence as being unpatriotic.

The reverse is actually true, since it is freedom of speech which is being attacked, and is unpatriotic to the original American Constitution.

What is the Actual MPG of these Cars in this Advertisement?

This is one of the common car ads they run in our local newspaper, and I was again struck as I've always been, by the patent misinformation our federal government department 'Transport Canada' allows car manufacturers to get away with.

Of course, the problem doesn't just lay with 'Transport Canada', nor is it just GM at fault here as most other car makers play the same game including in the U.S. marketplace.

I'm sorry, but does anyone really buy this? Look at the gas mileage these cars achieve! 46 mpg for the Vibe, and 52 mpg for the G5! Are these cars hybrids? I ask this because,these vehicles are approaching the real world driving mileage of the Toyota Prius hybrid for example!

(I've spoken with a couple of Prius owners about their mileage - roughly 50 -55mpg depending on driving conditions). I also checked a Consumer Reports Best Cars Buying Guide on the Vibe's fuel mileage. In essence the Pontiac Vibe is of course a Toyota Matrix - same engine, same transmission, same everything  except different body configuration. Consumer Reports lists the Matrix at getting no better than 29 mpg! They also state  the cars they rate are test driven by their staff so they can have an honest opinion of what they're rating.

Okay, so  let's give GM and Transport Canada the benefit of doubt for a moment in which they may get better mileage for these cars in their testing if they follow these important methodology criteria:

If there's absolutely no wind;
if the tires are perfectly inflated, balanced, and brand-spanking new , and of a much more expensive design then they sell their cars with;
if the asphalt on the road is of the type that allows the least amount of resistance to roll on;
if temperatures, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure is just right;
and if the road surface is actually not perfectly horizontal, but preferably on a slight, but optically invisible downhill grade in the direction the test cars will be going in...
and lastly...if real-world driving is also included in the rating of the vehicle, not just testing cars on  a sterile, and s stationary  laboratory' dynamometer.

I happen to own a 2007 Honda Fit. I'm confident to report it gets a real world driving mileage of 34 mpg at the most. It has a tiny 1.5 liter sized engine. Compare this with the engine sizes and mpg with the cars in the ad.

My only question is this: When will the car manufacturers and our federal governments be forced to own up to the actual mpg of the products they manufacture, and/or rate?

At the Canadian Federal government level there should be a private member's bill introduced to set in place open and honest auto industry reforms.

The public mood is more than ready for some actual progress in the fuel capability in modern cars. I've remarked in an earlier post, how I happen to own a 1966 Volvo with a 1.8 liter engine that achieves 26mpg.  Better mileage than many new, vehicles today!

The car and its technology which is extremely simple to work on is 43 years old! Hopefully, small upstart companies such as the Zenn Electric Motor car company and others will provide some much needed competition.

In the U.S. write your member of congress to end false advertising in the auto industry as well as how the fed tests cars.

* A quick follow up since making this post ; Yesterday, I spoke with a local GM Vibe owner here in the village, and he scoffed at the idea his car could get 46 mpg. Instead he agrees his Vibe achieves at best 28 - 30 mpg.