Gifkommetjie
No doubt, Canada's entry into US Northern Command will be presented to public opinion as part of Canada-US "cooperation", as something which is "in the national interest", which "will create jobs for Canadians", and "will make Canada more secure".
Ultimately what is at stake is that beneath the rhetoric, Canada will cease to function as a Nation:
• Its borders will be controlled by US officials and confidential information on Canadians will be shared with Homeland Security.
• US troops and Special Forces will be able to enter Canada as a result of a binational arrangement.
• Canadian citizens can be arrested by US officials, acting on behalf of their Canadian counterparts and vice versa.
Michel Chossudovsky | Canada's Sovereignty in Jeopardy: the Militarization of North America
WTF?
Following U.S. Principal Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Ryan Henry's April visits to Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Senegal — as well as meetings with the African Union, one wonders for how long AFRICOM will allow African countries to retain their sovereignty.
If 'discussions' followed the Canadian (and presumably, the Mexican) model, we are already junior partners in Empire. Recently, Thabo, following Stephen Harper's lead, has begun to exhibit behavioural disorders similar to Dubya's, i.e. paranoia, megalomania, wild and erratic mood swings, irrational thought, hallucinations, and dementia.
Much like Dick Cheney, Comrade Undertaker's trusted deputy and Minister of Health, Manto Tshabala Msimang, now steers the ship of state and 'politics' as we know it have gone to hell in a handbasket. The markets are muttering of a 'contagion' and the USMC lands at noon. I trust these are rumours, but I fear them to be true.
Dam full?
Cape Point... second from right
Rumour, the Cape Argus (the idiotic online policy of which is to deny non-subscribers access to the story of eight muggings on Lion's Head yesterday) and Cape Talk's John Maytham would also have us believe Cape Town's dams are 101.1 percent full. Enjoying a Mediterranean climate, we receive our rain in winter and, after a cycle of drought, we're starting to feel waterlogged again.
Maytham's a damned fine radio presenter with a broad general knowledge intelligently applied, so I've been a bit hacked off with his celebration of satiety (.xls). He knows better than to trust the City of Cape Town's figures and knows where to find more detailed, and reliable, statistics.
Because most rivers and dams feed each other and all feed our surrounding food producers, it's foolish to look at Cape Town as being divorced from the Western Cape province's various catchment areas. Looking at the bigger picture, we can see that the levels of our second-largest dam, Brandvlei — and another high-capacity dam, Kwaggaskloof, are sitting at around 75 and 72 percent respectively.
Enough for now...
And now that the newly opened Berg River Dam — another relatively high-capacity dam, is included in the official figures, its 29 percent pulls our provincial water level down to 83 percent of capacity. But so what? We're eight percent up on last year and look set to challenge 90 percent by spring.
That said, we account for only six percent of our national storage capacity.
Worryingly, the Western Cape is one of nine provinces and, on the whole, our water situation is not good at all. Nationally, our national figures show a downward trend and, where our dams were 90 percent full last year, they're only 73 percent full this year — a startling drop to say the least. Fully half our water flows from the Lesotho highlands and, should the Mountain Kingdom catch a fever, we feel the heat. Most of the rest flows through the heart of the country.
So, yeah, where was I? Things aren't going as swimmingly as we might like but, hey... who cares? We live in a beautiful, albeit bloody violent, land. Like most.
Note: And while I twitter on about a bit of rain, let's — like Jeneane, spare a thought for those who've lost everything to Hurricane Dean and Typhoon Sepat. Among others...
