Prince Edward Island's Confederation Bridge (a wise investment)

Whenever ​we visit the neighbouring province of Prince Edward Island (PEI), we cross the 8-mile long Confederation Bridge between the mainland in New Brunswick and the island, across the Northumberland Strait (which ices in the winter, incidentally).

That bridge cost Canada $1 billion, and took almost 5 years to build (1992-1997)​.  ​It was the fulfillment of a promise made to PIE just before Canada became a sovereign nation (in 1867) to connect PEI to the mainland.

That bridge gave thousands of people jobs.  I know men who worked on that project; and have their names enshrined in the brick paving at the PEI welcome centre.​

For perspective, consider that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost, to date, ​at a very conservative minimum, ​$1,​700 billion.   Those wars cost the Americans​ the equivalent of​ 1,​700 Confederation Bridges. Or, since they probably don't need more than ​100 or so Confederation Bridges ​(that would be 2 per US state), maybe they could use the other $1,​600 billion for something else.

​What could a country choose to do with $1,600 billion?  Any ideas come to your mind?

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Or maybe they could build 1​,700 Confederation Bridges (​that would be 34 in every US state) and then blow them all to bits; ​Americans seem to enjoy doing that with their wealth.  

​But ​1,​700​ 8-mile long bridges?  ​That's kind of silly. No, build one that's 13,600 miles long!  ​Americans: you can do it (if you choose)​ ... the rest of the world will be really impressed!​

Lots of things come to my mind, though, when I think of what I could do if I had ​1,700 Confederation Bridges.  I wonder why it never occurs to some Americans that they're simply flushing their treasure down the crapper​?​

My mother used to say, whenever I would spend my entire weekly allowance on bottle rockets and firecrackers, "Son, you're just burning up your money."  Yeh, point conceded, but how I loved to watch it burn! I guess some people just like a lot of noise and pretty sparks.

The wars were of choice; no one forced Americans into them; Americans chose war over what they could have had instead.  It was a bad choice, an unwise choice, but one they made with their eyes wide open. My dad always used to tell me: if you want to know what a man's priorities are, watch how he spends his money.  People always find a way to afford the things they really want most. Always.

Americans chose war.  Americans want war. Lots of it.  By their actions; they demonstrate that.

I’m criticizing Americans or that choice.  We all know they're God's chosen people, and I'm not questioning that.

But I do think you'd be far better off with 1,​700 Confederation Bridges. ​ They’re nice to have!

5 years ago: June 6, 2013. A day that changed world history

A passage from Glenn Greenwald's 2014 book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State:

At 5:40pm [June 6, 2013 in Hong Kong], Janine sent me an instant message with a link, the one I had been waiting to see for days. “It’s live,” she said.

NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily, the headline read, followed by a subhead: “Exclusive: Top Secret Court Order Requiring Verizon to Hand Over All Call Data Shows Scale of Domestic Surveillance Under Obama.”

That was followed by a link to the full FISA court order. The first three paragraphs of our article told the entire story:

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The National Security Agency is currently collecting the 

telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, 

one of America’s largest telecom providers, under a top 

secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, 

requires Verizon on an“ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA 

information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the 

US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the 

Obama administration the communication records of millions of 

US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – 

regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The impact of the article was instant and enormous, beyond anything I had anticipated. It was the lead story on every national news broadcast that night and dominated political and media discussions. I was inundated with interview requests from virtually every national TV outlet: CNN, MSNBC, NBC, the Today show, Good Morning America, and others. I spent many hours in Hong Kong talking to numerous sympathetic television interviewers—an unusual experience in my career as a political writer often at odds with the establishment press—who all treated the story as a major event and a real scandal.

In response, the White House spokesman predictably defended the bulk collection program as “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats.” The Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, one of the most steadfast congressional supporters of the national security state generally and US surveillance specifically, invoked standard post-9/11 fear-mongering by telling reporters that the program was necessary because “people want the homeland kept safe.”

But almost nobody took the government's claims seriously.

– Excerpt from

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Glenn Greenwald's No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State  (2014)

Edward Snowden remains the best example of courage, manhood, and character I've seen in 20 years.

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want 

to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own 

ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

___

Edward Snowden, Hong Kong interview, June 6, 2013

https://youtu.be/rB9L1PD7Cpo

What was the real reason Afghanistan was invaded?

There was a lot of international pressure on the political leaders of Afghanistan to hand over a suspected planner of the WTC tower attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. That man was Osama bin Laden, a former mujaheddin fighter against Russian forces occupying Afghanistan in the 1980's. Bin Laden was the founder and leader of a tiny extremist group called al-Qaeda, which was opposed to the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan. The CIA estimated the strength of this tiny band ​at ​about 200 fighters. 

No more than 200 men.

When Afghanistan's Taliban government refused its demands, the United States decided they would use their armed forces to overthrow the country's government and eliminate al-Qaeda. In October 2001, the USA began bombing Afghanistan. They targeted bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters and also the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

The war's public aims were to 1) dismantle al-Qaeda and 2) to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.

The War in Afghanistan became the longest war in United States history (now 16 years and ​8 months).

​It was a monumental mistake.​

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