Trailowner

Rast has been nominated for the Global e-Book Awards

2012-02-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

Hi All:

I was notified this evening that my high fantasy novel, Rast, has been nominated for the Fantasy genre of the Global e-Book Awards. I have a number of promotional plans to work on in company with the judging, so I expect I will be posting more often here while the Awards process is going.

Sources for Anywhere and Nowhere

2012-01-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

Discussion on finding research sources for military history, history of technology, castles, ruins, and ships. While the Internet has become a valuable research resource, there’s nothing like being there and touching the bones.

1. Living in the history

2. Books and used bookstores

3. Who’s online?

4. Museums, Re-enactments and battlefields

5. Techniques, sharing sites, and questions

2. Books and used bookstores

I found a couple of prize military research books in a used bookstore in Exeter, Devon. The older is “Manual of Field Engineering” 1911, the other is “Field Service Pocket Book” 1914. Both published by the British Army of that era for their officers in the field.

In “The Wildcat’s Victory”, Gisel needed to get two of her squadrons of light cavalry across an unfordable river, The answer was in the field engineering manual, item 81. Tackle for Swimming Horses. An officer and 35 men are sent across the river by commandeered small boats. There they help deploy a continuous rope over pulleys on two posts they plant solidly in the ground, while the main party constructs the same on their side. Horses take their turn, tied to the rope at intervals of about ten yards with head collars and head ropes. When the continuous rope is pulled around the posts (by manpower) the animals are driven singly into the water, which obliges them to swim across. When they reach the other side, men are waiting release them from the rope and lead them away. I figured at a rate of one horse a minute, Gisel’s squadrons could get all their animals across in a little over four hours.

Once I even used the handbook’s calculations for constructing timber bridges in the field to determine if an old logging bridge was safe to carry three tracked drills weighing 15 tons each across a river. It was; nobody fell in the river. The Field Service book is invaluable for determining times of march, ration scales, camp cooking and fuel and forage for my characters on journeys or campaigns—although I often supplement it with a book on “The Imperial Roman Army” I’ve owned for years.

It took me visits to a number of used bookstores to finish my collection of “Weapons and Warfare” a set of 24 encyclopaedias, out of print since 1980, that cover almost everything a writer wants to know about the ships, tanks, planes, rifles, guns and what have you from the 20th century. I bought a book called “The Medieval Fortress” from the Military History Book Club ( a good source if you have shelf space for all the tempting books) but a couple of used books, library discards, “The Palaces of Medieval England” and “Castles from the Air” filled in some of the blanks in the coverage.
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What about non-warlike research? When I ran steam plant I had to take qualifying exams, and I still keep the course material to hand to fill in the inevitable memory blanks. A visit to a liquidation store supplied me with a copy of “Jane Austen; A Family History” that is well thumbed now I’m venturing into writing about Regency times. Of course having the collection of contemporary classic novel reprints that my Mother collected (another book club) are also a valuable resource. When we had a good choice of smaller bookstore chains a few years ago I often visited one to pick up their used university textbooks, and still refer often to an old copy of “European Economic History” to check on credible figures to use for coinage, rates of exchange at different periods, the growth of cities, etc for my alternate history novels. Then there are the two physics texts, the chemistry, biology and economics books I use for reference...not to earn an academic qualification I must point out, but to be able to write fiction with credible backgrounds.

I’m sure your interests have governed the kind of material you have collected. While the topics you want to collect will be different than mine, the principle holds true. Your life experience and books you have collected will inevitably channel your writing into certain genres. Look out for the regular library discard sales and snap up anything that seems remotely connected to something you may write; visit used bookstores regularly to see what they’ve recently acquired—talk to the owners and let them know your interests. While I’ve never gone to estate auctions, my Mother used to haunt them and I still have copies of books from earlier years that she picked up for a few pence. How about “Memoirs of the Crusades”, including the Villehardouin translation from the thirteenth century and the de Joinville one of the fourteenth? I’ve also got a copy of “Conquest of Peru”, a mid 19th century reprint by Prescott.

What prizes have you found in bookstores? What other sources of research books would you recommend? So, don’t hang back, start collecting the books that will give you a more solid grounding in the kinds of fiction you want to write. Note that I said fiction—for non-fiction you must be completely up to date and that requires more academic expertise than most fiction writers want to jump into. For that level of research you need to have a friend or two in the academic field, and guess what—I have one of those too, as long as I don’t waste too much of her time. That suggests another source of research that I’ll mention next time.

Steaming to Romance

2011-12-23T18:18:00.000-08:00

Hi All:

Interrupting my posts of the Muse Conference workshop to let you know that the first two novellas of my Regency Romance\Steampunk crossover were sent to the submissions team yesterday. Since my editor for "Rast", the fantasy novel published there last March, is one of the submissions editors I am hopeful they will find a place to fit them into the catalogue.

After much deliberation and mind changing I'm calling the series of four novellas "Steaming to Romance" since it is both a very drawn out Regency romantic adventure and a steam powered spying and sea-fight tale. The first novella, "Spinster of Steam" introduces Roberta, the fictional daughter of George Stephenson and her steam ram "Spiteful" and two of the male leads. The second, "Romance and Steam" introduces two more male leads (on the premise that the more suitors the better) and the action in Roberta's shipyard to begin fulfilling the orders for the navy as well as readying some agents to spy on Napoleon's shipyards.

Meant to offer best wishes for the Holidays and New Year, so will tag it on here. Will post more workshop until I have more info to update the novella story submission.

More Sources for Writers.

2011-12-04T20:25:00.000-08:00

Continuing the repost of a Workshop I gave at the Muse Online Writers’ Conference http://themuseonlinewritersconference.com/ this year I will post the rest of the first day’s workshop 1. Being There: Living in the History. (The first part is the next post below.)

Now to a somewhat later history. In my Iskander series story The Wildcat’s Victory I wanted Gisel to command a scouting force that has to slow down the advance of a much larger formation. The historical time in the alternate world is around 1700 but Gisel’s people are from a modern age and they could equip her with a few newer weapons to even the odds. I decided to have her demand a battery of 1900 vintage field guns to increase her striking power (the Iskanders had been improving on the local weaponry for a few years). Seen any early field guns lately? Luckily, I have a nearby example outside a Canadian Legion branch at Lethbridge—a WWI Krupp 77mm weapon, developed from the Erhardt fifteen pounder (that I had picked as Gisel’s model; the British Army bought some to even the odds in the Boer War). I already knew how to crew a field gun and calculate the aiming, from my basic training in the Royal Artillery, on WWII twenty-five pounders back in 1959, so I was able to ‘teach’ Gisel how to act as her own forward observer (FO) and enable her guns to use their seven kilometre range to defeat the enemy cannons and a whole brigade of cavalry in her final desperate action.

Now, is that writing what you know or knowing what you want to write? Probably a bit of both. My writing sometimes ventures into deserts (as in my fantasy Rast) and I spent more than four years working in the Libyan Desert; if I need to write a scene in the Arctic I can use my two years’ experience surveying in the Arctic Islands. If Gisel needs to fly in their spaceplane freighter I put her in my memory of the Hercs we used to haul our equipment and fuel to our prospects in the Arctic so I can describe riding in the aircraft hold or on the bunk behind the pilots in the cockpit.

What about ships? The feel of my galleons and ships of the line are all modelled on HMS Victory that I’ve visited several times. If I need a more modern battlewagon I recall my impressions of the USS Texas of 1913, waiting to welcome visitors beside the San Jacinto monument outside Houston; or the battleships and carriers the Royal Navy used to put on display at Navy Days when I was a kid. Aircraft I can remember in their hundreds, I studied some aeronautical engineering at Farnborough. Steam engines, that figure in both Rast and some of the Iskander novels are easy—I’m familiar with stationary steam plant and operated boilers and both turbine and reciprocating engines.

I’d like to hear about your experiences of visiting places that have featured later in your writing—what did touching the bones add to your writing of the scenes? I have more examples to show you—if you want to see them I have three scenes from my Iskander series novels where I use my background info for the scenes using castle, dungeon, and artillery handling. The file is in the Presenters forum on the Conference Forum page. I you can’t find it, I have to admit that neither can I, but we’ll sort that out Monday morning.

Well, I suspect you’re getting the point of the sermon, but what if you’ve not managed to do all that preparation? The rest of this presentation had better cover some of that. Next time I will tell you what useful texts I’ve found in used bookstores as well as some well chosen book clubs.

Sources for Anywhere and Nowhere

2011-11-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

These next few posts are going to be reprints of the workshop I gave on research sources in the 2011 Muse Online Writers’ Conference. Christopher Hoare; http://christopherhoare.ca/

Discussion on finding research sources for military history, history of technology, castles, ruins, and ships. While the Internet has become a valuable research resource, there’s nothing like being there and touching the bones.

1. Living in the history

2. Books and used bookstores

3. Who’s online?

4. Museums, Re-enactments and battlefields

5. Techniques, sharing sites, and questions

1. Being There: Living in the History.

I must first acknowledge that an awful lot of investigation aimed at catching up on background research for fiction can be done online today. However, reading about the detail your story needs isn’t as good as actually touching the bones.

In somewhat the same vein as the aphorism “write what you know” I have to suggest that if you ever think, or thought, you wanted to write fiction one day, you should ideally have already been living the life that leads toward the writing you want to do. I must hasten to add that this is not an unbreakable law, nor a fatal error if you haven’t collected experiences and knowledge that you now find useful. I merely suggest that it will be easier to write what you know if you have always
built your knowledge base with a leaning toward that writing. I’ll offer a couple of examples.

I was born and raised in England and have always been interested in the remnants of history scattered about the countryside. I liked visiting castles, Iron Age oppidas, and traces of Roman roads and marching camps. Today, if I need to include a scene in a castle, I have memories of being in several to draw out and add to the page. What good castles would I recommend from Europe? Bodiam in Sussex, an empty and largely intact coastal fortress dating from the 1380's, is a great prototype to adapt to almost any medieval castle your story needs. A bit later and something more Disneyesque? You can hardly beat Berg Eltz near Cochem an der Mosel in Germany. Still occupied by the Counts of Eltz, it has parts open to the public most of the year. The oldest part of the structure just grew into a twisted labyrinth of rooms and passages in Medieval times, while the present residential wings are mostly 16th and 17th century. I use the maze of steps and twisted passages of the old wing of Eltz whenever I want to ‘feel’ what it’s like in a confusing stone fortress. Can’t leave castles without mentioning the visitable dungeon at Rheinfels above St Goar on the Rhine. It has the bottle shaped holes in the wall beneath the guardroom, where the prisoners had to be let down or brought up on a rope when the hatch in the floor was opened. One of the four (as I recall) dungeons has a hole broken in the wall at the base where a visitor can enter from the courtyard level and imagine being confined in the pitch dark stinking hole for years. I put my protagonist Gisel Matah in one of these kinds of dungeon in Deadly Enterprise.

The second half of this discussion will be the topic of my next post here.

Apologies---but read the review

2011-11-06T19:32:00.000-08:00

It has been over a month since I last posted here. Post frequency will pick up soon---another two reviews due and progress (and teasers) for my latest project to report.

Sold nine POD copies of Rast this past month, as well as nine PODs of my Iskander series novels. Eighteen copies of books in less than a month is a record around here, so I have to admit being pleased.

Read the new review of Rast---second post after this one. I received word from one of my reviewers that she has received the copy I sent, so I'm hoping I will have a new review for Christmas.

The two novellas of my Regency romance/steampunk crossover are progressing. I want to submit them this month along with a rough synopsis of the third novella. There has to be a fourth, but apart from the fact I have to settle the romance between my protagonist and one of her three new admirers, I haven't decided what has to happen.

I'm still posting the excerpts of Regency Bagatelle on my other blog http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com I started Bagatelle to practice writing that sounded authentic Regency and the exercise has passed 12000 words and is still going. Maybe it would make a novella, but it has already been published electronically, on the blog. Perhaps I'll add it to my website as a new give-away.

That's about it for now...but scroll down and read the review. Bye.

I don't really want to hide the review

2011-10-03T13:10:00.000-07:00

Hi All:

I really need to post a new blog entry but as I say above .... well, you know how it is. Someone says something good about you and you want to relish it.

This is now the site for my fantasy, Rast, and the publisher MuseItUp. I have started on a new submission to Muse, but it's not what my editor wants me to work on. I know I'm supposed to follow good advice, but I'm not ready to return to the magic realm of Rast, nor to Offran the materialist nation of Commander Antar, the novel antagonist, where much of the next novel must take place.

I have had some votes for making the Pythian, the mysterious oracle living under the palace of Rast, a more significant character next time. Perhaps even the narrator of the next story, which is a keen idea most likely to start me writing. Thanks Nancy (my editor).

But at the moment I'm working on my Regency non-romance as a series of novellas, with the first entitled (now) Spinster of Steam. It was supposed to be a romance, but the background scenario has hidden the romance. It's still there; by the time we get to the second novella the romantic elements will take shape. It crosses a whole slew of genres; romance, regency, steampunk, espionage, satire (two male characters are spoofs of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes) and alternate history. It takes place in the middle of the Regency period (strictly, 1811 to 1820) and I'm looking for a way to bring Napoleon in for a guest appearance.

Anyway, that's my to do list. Don't forget to look at the review of Rast in the previous post.

A new Review for Rast

2011-09-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Lady Rosalie Skinner, a fellow Muse author, for pointing out I had a new review for Rast on its Amazon Kindle page. Thanks also to 'Unhinged' from Eugene Oregon for the review. If you see this, Unhinged, you must have been reading SF and Fantasy for as long as I have. The lack of something new in fantasy was one of my reasons for writing Rast.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing!, July 26, 2011
By
Unhinged (Eugene, OR, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rast (Kindle Edition)
When you have read as much science fiction and fantasy as I have (I started with Asimov's "Pebble in the Sky" back in the '50's) it gets harder and harder to find new ideas. I was delighted to discover a truly original (at least to me) take on magic in this high fantasy novel.

There are bad times a-brewing in the world of Rast. The old ruler is dying, finally overcome by the magic he has controlled throughout his reign (more about this in a bit). His son and successor, Prince Egon, is uncertain and untested in what he must do to master this same magic, which is vital to the survival of the realm. The prince must not only conquer the magic and learn to use it, he must also marry a princess from a related line of magic-users to produce an heir able to take over when the time comes. Problem is, the woman the prince has loved from childhood is not the one who can give him this heir. If this isn't enough, his kingdom has been invaded, not once, but twice. Fanatic hordes from the north have descended upon his realm, and an anti-magic empire from across the sea has sent a force to conquer with fire and iron.

What impressed me the most about Rast was the author's depiction of magic as a sentient force that must be conquered by those who would use it, and which would eventually and inevitably destroy the user. This was a new one for me, and it is well thought out and well handled.

The sub themes of the conflict between magic and science, the political intrigue, the forbidden love between the prince and the woman he has loved since they were children, all are woven together in a complex plot that requires the reader to pay attention. That attention is rewarded by a well-crafted story.

There are a couple of places where the author gets a little carried away with descriptive passages, but even those are well-written, just a little too long. In general, the world is believable, the characters equally so (I got really fond of Jady) and the action first-rate. If you enjoy high fantasy, you'll enjoy Rast.

Rast Lives

2011-08-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

I've been too involved with life things to get ready for book launches and signings of Rast, now I have the POD copies. Of course, they won't go away ... whereas the window frames that have been neglected for too many years need scraping and painting before winter sets in. Then there are the firewood expeditions to prepare for.

I actually hate the idea of climbing ladders to get to the roof where the last windows are. As much as I hate the idea of heading out to the forest to wield a chainsaw and cut down trees. My left leg has been paining lately and threatening not to be fit enough for such activities. I suspect it's psychosomatic.

I have to admit to being a convert to the ideas that we are all creatures of a mind-body gestalt, as well as a very Buddhist notion that we have created the world we recognise within our minds---and never experience the actual reality at all. Believing is seeing. By most people's understanding, a very topsy turvy world indeed. I guess that's where I get the fantasy writing from.

Rast was intended to be a topsy turvey story. I remembered all the men's adventure magazines of my childhood and youth, where the brave adventurers of modern western nations braved the mysteries and dangers of savage lands to carry forward the flag of empire and civilisation---and then turned it around. Today, the whole world has been turned around and the former movers and shakers of a pliant universe are being moved and shaken by populations that once were ignorant and passive, and by the very world itself---striking back at all the thoughless destruction wrought by those conquering heroes.

Of course, most Westerners do not believe these things are happening (or perhaps are the work of traitors within our midst) because they cannot see what they do not believe. Rast says that the simple and primative might have the better grasp on reality. Take warning all you doubters . . . the magic has alreay rebelled.

Rast POD Copies Arrived.

2011-08-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

I was beginning to doubt the efficiency of Purolator Courier, but the driver rang our doorbell in the nick of time. Two boxes holding some very nice looking copies of Rast, and with no demands for extra payment that I always suffered from UPS.

I have already shown them about and sold four already. I have also given two away...well, my editor certainly deserved one for putting up with my quibbling.

She and her husband put me up at their home just outside Calgary so I could attend the writing conference When Words Collide. Big thanks to Nancy and Doug. Nancy attended as well, so we took turns driving into Calgary.

The conference had a number of interesting presentations—well, most of them looked interesting but not all fitted my present activities. I halved my time, with one half devoted to meeting people and listening to readings. I strongly recommend taking every opportunity to network at writers conferences—most of the information in presentations can be found elsewhere (with one caveat) but meeting people who have more solid credentials than ones self in the business can be priceless.

The caveat? Sometimes panellists in group discussions can let fly a few home-truths in the cut and thrust of disagreement. There were no bitter verbal fights in the presentations I attended, but a few oxen were subtly gored. There were few high priests of literature present, mostly genre writers, and so the pretensions of academia and professional reviewers were taken out and aired.

At the last presentation I went to the panellists discussed promoting the writers’ life and experience on social media...Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ especially. A couple panellists suggested the latter was probably more useful than Facebook, and most of them gave examples of the value of being active on Twitter. I’ll have to try again—I never saw the utility in sending midget messages, but the trick is in the extensions like hashtags and following.

Now I have to plan a book launch for Rast and a few signings and sales. Still no more than silence from EPIC...it’d sure look nice to have award stickers on the front of the copies. Ah well, one can always dream.

Wot's Noo?

2011-07-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

Not much to report at the moment.

My POD copies of Rast have not yet arrived, so the planning of more promotion is stalled. I may have mentioned I entered Rast in the EPIC Awards this year and am waiting to learn whether it sinks or swims.

I'm following Rast with a Regency work. I'd call it a romance if it didn't have as much action ...it has a great deal of steam train and ship travel but it's not fantastical enough to call steampunk. It takes place in a somewhat alternate Regency because I shifted the 19th century rapid progress of steam to begin earler, with the start England's South Eastern Railway moved to 1802---and gave Napoleon a boost with a new plan to invade England in 1815. Oh...and the female protagonist is the proprietor of a steamship yard on the Clyde---as well as being pursued by interested gentlemen.

Other than those twists I'm writing in a style as near to Regency as I dare, with all the formality and convoluted social graces that one might enjoy in a novel of Jane Austen. I have a Regency practice ongoing, with posts on my other blog http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com to work myself into the groove of thinking Regency.

Rast On Sale

2011-07-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone:

Rast is on sale for 40% off this holiday weekend ... celebrating both Canada Day and 4th of July.

While the regular price is a bargain, the reduction might make a difference to friends of yours who need an extra incentive to risk reading the work of an author they are not familiar with. We need every little push---that's the only way we up and coming writers get to be recognised by the reading public.

I will be offering freebies in July when I receive my POD copies of Rast. The people who have offered to read it for reviews will get free copies, so why shouldn't a new reader get the same thing? Not sure how I will set it up yet, but watch this space.

Website: www.christopherhoare.ca
Iskander Blog : http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com
Rast Blog: http://trailowner.blogspot.com

Two Bits of News

2011-06-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

Whoops. I see a month has gone by without me updating this blog. (I have been updating my other blog at http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com ).

Until now I have had little to add to the progress of my fantasy novel Rast, but it looks as if my publisher is going to pass on a deal from LSI that will reduce the cost of POD print books of Rast, so I will have them to sell in July. Whoopee?? That means I will have to go out and start peddling books again. That’s what I get for wanting to be an author.

On the electronic front, I have entered Rast in the 2012 EPIC E-Book Awards in the Fantasy category. I hope I will have news to post here in due course. While I’m sceptical about the value of awards, the EPPIEs (as they used to be known) do have real human judges evaluating the entries and are not just a popularity contest for authors. If Rast gets anywhere in the contest, I would hope it would impress potential readers that the novel is worth looking at.

I’m supposed to be starting a sequel to Rast, but except for some cogitating nothing concrete has been produced. I’m working on a new venture for Muse, which is my Rast publisher. Since most of the authors and readers are romance fans, (and erotic romance) I’ve decided to dip my foot in the pool. Nothing so straightforward as a mere romance novel—I’m looking at writing Regency Steampunk (with romance) to combine killing a whole batch of ‘birds’ with one blast. It will be a series of three novellas—the first is complete in first draft.

Yes...steampunk is usually Victorian and filled with machines impossible to engineer with steam technology, but I’ve already produced some of those in Rast, so “Regency Bagatelle” (the series title) must have viable machines, even if I take liberties with their birthdays. My 1814 has Napoleon still at large and preparing to invade England again, and my two romancers are an aristocratic spy and the engineer daughter of George Stephenson. Will provide progress updates as I proceed.

Catching Up

2011-05-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

I didn’t go away after finishing the Virtual Book Tour, but my mind and my promotion get-up-and-go did. I managed to find the next free copy winner and send it off before I took wing in other directions. The two winners are ---

V. R. Leavitt, who left a Facebook address I could contact her on.

Teresa K, who I tracked down through one of the Yahoo sites.

I also had the first of the reviews for Rast during the VBT and post it next---

Book Review: Rast by Christopher Hoare
It is a dangerous time in the world of Rast. Rebelling magic forces are slowly killing the reigning Drogar. His son, Prince Egon, is set to take over as the new sorcerer-king, admitting the deadly magic to himself in such a way as to control it.

Jady, Guardian of the Silent Forest, is the last of her line. Her father and brothers have already been killed by the Deepning Pools. Though in love with Egon, she is sent away on his orders. No matter their feelings, she cannot bear him an heir that will become the next Drogar. Ignoring his orders, an angry Jady goes off to meet the Princess, whose marriage to Prince Egon has been arranged.

As if this trying time of the interregnum isn't enough, Offrangs arrive seeking to conquer Rast. Conflict is inevitable. But who will win?

I'm not a huge lover of fantasy novels, but I've read one of the books in Hoare's speculative fiction Iskander series and enjoyed his strong, female heroine. When he asked me to review Rast, what some have claimed is his best work, I decided to give it a shot.

Part of my issue with fantasy novels is I rarely see one that is less than the size of my Bible. Because you are dealing with made up worlds and beings, this requires the author to be especially clear when describing the setting and the book's characters. I have to hand it to Hoare because he managed to do that in only 269 pages. Not once did I feel lost or unable to figure out the setting or the characters; though a Rast Guidebook is available for free with each download of the e-Book.

An interesting aspect of this novel is that the magic is like a character in and of itself. I've seen this done with an island in Evenings on Dark Island by Rhett DeVane and Larry Rock. It's quite fascinating when an object, or in this case, a supernatural power is so much a part of the story that it takes on character-like qualities.

Rast contains many characters that will elicit emotions in the reader. She will feel sorry for Egon and Jady who are forced to deny their love because of their duties. She will be inspired by the devotion the dying Drogar has to his son and the kingdom of Rast. It's quite likely she will feel the need to throttle the Princess multiple times during the story.

A masterfully told high fantasy novel that will wow you with its explosive conclusion is what you'll find in Rast by Christopher Hoare.

Title: Rast
Author: Christopher Hoare
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-926931-43-2
SRP: $5.95

Available in a Kindle edition
http://booktoursandmore.blogspot.com/2011/04/book-review-rast-by-christopher-hoare.html
The review was from Cheryl Malandrinos http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com

VBT is ended

2011-04-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

April is mostly over and my VBT for Rast finished on Friday. I have yet to check through the posts for comments to pick the winner of the second free e-book copy of Rast. Will do that tomorrow and post about the VBT some more.

Sale! Sale! Sale!

2011-04-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

$4.76 Only
From now until April 20th Rast is on sale at MuseItUp Publishing at 20% off.

http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=55&Itemid=1

The VBT has two more weeks to go. You can get a copy of Rast at an even better deal if you tickle my sensibilities with a smart comment on the tour visits yet to come. I’m giving two copies free to commenters on the tour.

Go here and scroll to the bottom of the page to see the hour schedule –

http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2011/03/02/rast-virtual-book-tour-april-2011/

Book Tour starts Monday

2011-04-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

My Virtual Book Tour for “Rast”, my latest fantasy novel begins on April 4th. Here is the schedule for the first week –

Monday, April 4th
Guest blogging and giveaway at The Book Connection http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, April 5th
Book spotlighted at Broowaha http://www.broowaha.com/

Wednesday, April 6th
Interviewed at Pump Up Your Book http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/

Thursday, April 7th
Interviewed at The Hot Author Report http://www.thehotauthorreport.com/

The entire schedule can be found at http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2011/03/02/rast-virtual-book-tour-april-2011/

In addition to the book giveaway at The Book Connection I’ll have gift coupons for two more copies of Rast to give away during the VBT. The rules are mine – I will be reading the comments left at each blog visited and will be looking for pertinent comments and the e-mail addresses of the commenters who wish to participate. I’d like to give away two copies before the end of the tour – pdf copies unless the commenters have another format mentioned – and do it right away, no waiting, no skill testing questions. What am I looking for? I dunno – surprise me.

I must also mention another free e-book. At my website http://www.christopherhoare.ca/ you can find a free download of “Gisel Matah and the Slave Ship” a teaser for my Iskander series novels. I have recently added a copy in .prc format to the list of download files. Don’t you remember how everyone was saying, just a few years ago, that e-books would never take off until they all used the same format to avoid confusion? Well, it never happened and the confusion increases daily. I bet the monkeys could create a more efficient marketplace than humans.

Virtual Book Tour -- April

2011-03-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

My Virtual Book Tour for my fantasy novel "Rast" begins on April 4th. The tour schedule is here -- http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2011/03/02/rast-virtual-book-tour-april-2011/ and I will be posting reminders and changes here as the month progresses.

Please mark your April calendars and follow along for the tour. Guest blogs, interviews, excerpts, reviews and spotlights. For some lucky followers who identify themselves by commenting on the most tour sites there will be free copies of "Rast".

Rast is available.

2011-03-08T15:13:00.000-08:00

My high fantasy “Rast” was released on the last day of February. I’ve been busy sending out notes everywhere but here, but that will cease. I have a Virtual Book Tour booked for April and will post the online locations where you can find me here, as well as where free e-book copies of the novel can be won. (I don’t know yet as nothing is decided.)

Later in the year the POD paperback version of “Rast” should be available and I will post the info where to find it for those who still prefer to squeeze the pages between thumb and forefinger. Actually, an e-book reader is easier to hold.

At the moment “Rast” is only available at the publisher’s site – http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=55&category_id=64&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

What is “Rast”? Take a read here –
“When the magic revolts to destroy the reigning Drogar, unleashing old enemies against Rast, a new danger lands upon the coast. An adventurer who scoffs at the thought of magic, Commander Antar, comes to pillage Rast for the burning stone that can fuel his iron furnaces, and to conquer the magic kingdom.

Prince Egon must tame his father’s deadly magic before he can withstand these assaults. His sweetheart Jady must ride alone to thwart the evil Deepning’s ascendance, released by the weakened Drogar. She also rides to confront the princess who must displace her; while Egon becomes Antar’s prisoner and the invaders’ guide through the mountains. Can the young peoples’ courage and magic repel the materialists from the sea?”

Don’t forget to visit http://www.christopherhoare.ca/ to read about all my work and perhaps download the free novella “Gisel Matah and the Slave Ship” my promo of the Iskander series.

Rast will be available soon.

2011-02-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

If the planned release is on schedule, Rast will be published in a little over two weeks. I guess it’s time for me to make sure that this blog site – switched to Rast matters – begins to look like that.

I already have one potential reviewer anxiously awaiting the novel. I have several others who have reviewed my Iskander novels waiting in reserve. I haven’t actually contacted them yet, I’d better wait until I have the published file to hand, but I expect most of them to agree to give Rast a read. Then there are the reviewers in Lea’s long list at MuseItUp. Other writers say that reviews are not as good promotion as word of mouth recommendations, but they are on the route to getting those.

I’m one of thousands of novelists in a catch 22. People hesitate to buy my work because they don’t recognise my name: they don’t recognise my name because they’ve not read my work.

Next I’ll paste in my latest promotional blurb for Rast – do you think it will draw readers?

In Rast, magic is not a convenient parlour trick, it’s a deadly force that takes no prisoners. Those who must wield it are doomed, for it never ceases to work within the mind and nerves until it destroys its master.

And now, the time of the interregnum is here; the reigning sorcerer king, the Drogar of Rast, is struggling for a last grasp on magic power while his heir, Prince Egon, must take up the deadly mantle. Egon is fearful but courageous in his duty. Not one peril threatens Rast, but many.

While he struggles to tame the magic to his command the mechanistic Offrang adventurers arrive to seize the land for their empire. The Offrangs don’t just disbelieve in magic, they treat any attempt to discuss it with withering scorn. Then, when the Drogar falters, the North Folk sweep out in their multitudes to cover the land of Rast at the behest of their depraved Casket of Scrolls. Deepning too, a creature of earth magic in its mountain pools, stirs to gain power enough to conquer Rast.

The Prince’s sweetheart Jady does her best to support him, but she is not strong enough in the power of the lineage to bear him a magic wielding heir. She sets out to meet the caravansi of the cousin princess who is sent to be his consort with duty and anger both warring in her mind. The crisis will reveal surprising enemies, surprising friends, and as the Drogar tells Jady, “Even a Drogar may not see a future not yet determined.” While Egon goes west to spy on the Offrangs and Jady makes her way east, the oracle provided by the Pythian that lives in a cavern beneath the palace reveals, “You have no high point to see the scattered threads but must trust to those who grasp them.”

Everyone has a part to play in the preservation of Rast.

Free Novella: New Website

2011-01-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

I’m announcing a free story on my website at www.christopherhoare.ca now. The website has been recovered from the scam outfit that stole it and has been recreated in an entirely new form. On the home page you will see the cover illustrations of my four published novels as well as the one due out in March. I’ve also added cover-type images for work in progress and the free novella.

“Gisel Matah and the Slave Ship” takes its background from a paper sent to me by a historian friend. She put together the story of the founding of Sierra Leone as a colony in which to settle released slaves. Over a hundred years or so, the project ran into problems, opposition, and the need for compromises. Gisel, my young officer protagonist of my Iskander series novels, runs into most of those problems during the few days she’s in charge of the captured ship, and trying to find a safe place to release the slaves aboard. I tell the story as entertainment, but Gisel in her conflicts with her impatient commanders, tells the true story of the African colony in miniature.

The e-book downloads I offer are not all perfect – I find ePub is a bearcat of a format. I used two different programs to convert my manuscript, one a free download and one a free online service, and I guess they were worth what I paid for them. Not exactly, because I’ve seen lots of online traffic about the problems between Kindle, Kobo, and Nook versions and the tweaking publishers have to do to produce a clean file. The html and the pdf downloads are far better files.

What else is new? I’m thinking of using this blog site as a location for my MuseItUp Publishing releases, starting with “Rast” which is due out in March. My Double Dragon Publishing novels will stay on http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com/ . It’s not that I want to keep the publishers separated but that the Iskander series novels are alternate world SF and Rast is a high fantasy. Some writers caution a writer not to muddle the genres, although I don’t think SF and Fantasy fight like cats and dogs. The posts I’ve added to trailowner recently have brought in a few new people and doing that is what this promotion business is all about.

Remember, you can download the free novella, “Gisel Matah and the Slave Ship” right now from www.christopherhoare.ca . (The pdf version is the cleanest read.)

Announcing a new ice age

2011-01-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

The way glaciers are built up is by the deposition of more snow in the winter than the sun can melt in the summer. You should see the snowdrift in our yard this winter – it covered the 4' fence, then it buried the 2' extensions I built onto it to keep the dogs from escaping. Right now it’s heading for the 8' mark, and almost there.

Two board fences are buried under it now, I think it must be the snowdrift that ate the world. I had to rig a temporary fence across the yard to keep the dogs from reaching the drift or they’d be off every time they’re let out. The doghouse was almost buried last night with a side drift up to the roof. I’d leave it until Spring, or maybe the next interglacial, but when I unload firewood out of the trailer, the shortest route is to pitch the logs over the other (that’s other, other) snowdrift onto the doghouse entry to collect from the house side of our Antarctic garden.

Hasn’t been too warm around her for a few weeks, either. But I’ve discovered why the Arctic has been warming these past few years – it’s been sending the G##### D### cold air down to us. I see the kids at another house a few blocks away have started building an igloo – smart kids, they’ll need it by the time they’re ready to graduate. It never hurts to have a craft skill of some kind under your belt.

Meanwhile, I should start planning a big sunshade to build over my drift. I figure that if I worked at building my drift over the next few years I could have a glacier halfway to town by peak oil. I could charge a small fee for people wanting to skate or cross country ski to town instead of burning gas in their cars. That bit of carbon dioxide reduction, plus the water I can lock up in my glacier, I’m well on the way to saving the world from climate change. And you all thought I was wasting my time.

Hope 2011 has been good to you, so far ...

Keep warm...

Rast to be released by MuseItUp Publishing March 2011
Free novella download available from website (soon) "Gisel Matah and the Slave Ship"
The Iskander series – Arrival, Deadly Enterprise, The Wildcat’s Victory, The Wildcat's Burden
see links to all at –
http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/eAuthor.php?Name=Christopher%20Hoare
http://www.christopherhoare.ca
http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com

2010-08-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

My new posts have generally been serious, so perhaps it's time to do something different. Odd names arrived in my life when I was young -- other than my own, which I never liked. My favourite comic in my pre-teens had Dan Dare, space adventurer on the front and a private eye called Harris Tweed on the back. I wrote some comics of my own at that age and wanted to have a PI with an 'object' name.

My mother suggested Toby Jug, so that's who he became. I didn't escape the name thing for some time. In my teens I hunted for all the library books featuring another PI, called Norman Conquest. He had a wife called Pixie and drove a Hispano Suiza roadster. I looked up the author and his books about a year ago, they were supposedly written (under a nom de plume) in the fifties, but with that car I'd place them closer to 1930. I even bought a used copy of one from Abe Books -- managed to read almost half of it.

Now I have a confession. I've always wanted to write a story about a character called Sam Handwich. Don't ask why -- it's just a thought that comes and goes. There is probably already such a character in a children's book, but what adult story would Sam fit in? Do you think there should be a contest for the story and character that fits the name best? I'd throw in a free e-book as prize. Promise that it wouldn't feature either Norman Conquest or Toby Jug.

The Cover image for Rast

2010-08-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

My fantasy novel Rast will be published by MuseItUp Publishing in March 2011. Rast has had a long and troubled journey, spending months at various publishers -- then years at another who was to publish it. When it seemed it would never reach the head of the queue there, and the IRS seemed to think it unacceptable send royalties to someone in Canada, I took it back. It then spent almost another year in limbo before finding its home with a Canadian publisher.

The story of its journeys almost equals the tribulations of Jady, the co-protagonist of Rast -- shown here as she travels across the Undulains and into the desert of Skeletal to find a resolution for her troubles.

The other big Time Killer

2010-08-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

If writing were the only effort authors had to put out we'd be a lot more prolific. I like to think more accomplished, too. Most writers admit to finding the success of a first publication a bit of a two edged sword. It's a shock when the craft of writing turns into the business of writing.

I admit that I'd rather do nothing but write. If left to my own desires I could write continually, but the first nasty truth to land on us is that the publisher has schedules and a catalog planned, and doesn't want the idea you have in mind right away. If you want to emulate the SF writers of that golden age and publish four novels a year, you'd better have four publishers.

Then there is the need for promotion. It costs money, so very few publishers do any these days -- and then only for their established best sellers. With all the thousands of new works published yearly an author has to make a noise to be noticed. It's sad but true, that the best novel in the market will never be noticed unless the author puts in time selling it. The word on my writing list says the most successful authors spend 50% of their available time writing, and the other 50% promoting.

Take a look at my other blog http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com where I'm posting character interviews.

Signs of a Pulse?

2010-08-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks to both you busy ladies who commented on yesterday’s post.

I guess that having a specific character in mind and being open enough to let them loose and see what happens is as much a stance as any other. Following ones curiosity is a respected way to explore reality. I’m wondering whether the way I was asking the question looks for ‘what frame of mind do you need to be in before’ ... rather than your more open process.

Had to chuckle, Joylene. I too like to read reviews to see what I missed. I bought that weighty tome of Farah Mendlesohn’s, “Rhetorics of Fantasy” to see what I was missing in my fantasy writing process. Seems quite a lot, but I don’t think it possible to write good fiction if one has one eye on the academic angle. I think I got much the same from the book as I get from reviews – “hey, was that what I was doing?” Would I change anything if she’d pointed out something wrong? I doubt it.

We’ve all had to learn to take criticism and learn from it. What is it that convinces you that the critique is valid ... enough that you have to do something about it?

Still Attempting to Revive.

2010-08-02T18:21:00.000-07:00

This old blog needs more than mouth to mouth – it needs chest compressions. I guess I should give it five and see if anything starts up.

How about more questions? Where do you stand to write? I don’t mean physically, I mean what worldview, what stance to life, what philosophy guides your words?

Does a solid, unshakeable position produce better fiction that an openness to fresh perspectives? From my own experience of critiquing other writers’ fiction I’d say works tagged with a ‘philosophical brand’ are more wooden and unbelievable than those that wander open-eyed into possible minefields.

What does your own experience say?

Reviving this Old Blog.

2010-08-01T20:08:00.000-07:00

I hadn’t posted anything new here for many months ... going on to years. Maybe it’s time to start something new here because some of you visitors may have come here through seeing my old screen name Trailowner on posts at other sites.

What to write about – considering that my http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com site is where I post all my latest writing related material ... mostly connected to my Iskander series novels.

This one should do something different. How about question topics? My fantasy novel, Rast, due out March 2011 has a different take on magic that any other I know about. Magic isn’t a neat parlour trick or something activated by the wave of a magic wand – it is a force integral to the world of Rast. It can only be controlled by very few individuals, all connected to the same family, and if they fail to control the forces, they could rebel and destroy the world.

Your take on this? Is the concept too unusual? Does it spoil the fun? Please comment and let me know.

Redirecting

2009-09-07T10:49:00.001-07:00

Hi All:

If you have found this site you may find some posts of interest, but I moved on in 2007 to start a new blog to publicize the second novel of my Iskander series, the Wildcat's Victory. It's at http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com/

If you want to spend a bit of time here you may enjoy writing from my 'angst period' but I'm really trying to post items of value to readers on the blog. Plus, there are links to all three of the Iskander novels, and I will be updating as the next one nears release date. As well, I have a fantasy novel outside of the Iskander series looking for a new publisher. It's worth keeping tabs on.

Don’t knock the warm.

2007-11-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

Contrary to all the pontificating going on these days I have to say that climate change is likely to become one of the best things that ever happened to the Earth. When the streets of New York look like those of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina even the most powerful individuals opposing the changes we need to make in human society will lose a lot of their clout.

I say this because several studies have pointed out that solving the climate change crisis involves a lot more than watching the carbon budget. Climate change is the canary in the Earth’s total environment – only one of a suite of degradations that humans are making progressively worse. What are the others? Let me start from the smallest and work up.

The automobile has proved to be the worst invention ever made against the well-being of the Earth and human society. Just drive down any thoroughfare, in any country in the world, during rush hour and you will very soon be an avowed enemy of every lunatic trying to weave in and out in front of you, or pass on one side while another does the same on the opposite. Separating ourselves in our own mobile cocoons whenever we leave the home has done as much harm to human solidarity as did the building of castles in the Middle Ages. “Alles menschen werden bruder”, all humans become brothers, says Schiller’s poem Beethoven used in his Ode to Joy. Not on the highway – there’s no joy there.

The pollution automobiles spit out is the least of their noxious effects. Were we to have solid government resolve to ban the use of any vehicle not fueled by hydrogen we would still only be halfway to remedying the ill caused by the private automobile. I need hardly point out that the situation world wide is only going to be worse when the billions of China and India join the traffic jams. Cities as real communities, nourishing our humanity, will fade out of existence, and that social glue, the camaraderie of ordinary people doing ordinary things together, will decline even further. One of my fondest memories of Greece is of a journey in an overcrowded bus across the island of Syros, where at every stop along the road half the passengers had to alight, joking and complaining, so that others could leave or join the bus. We became brothers and sisters on that journey – even the English couple behind me fretting about safety standards – as we grew more connected through the minor adversity.

The effects of the auto on our geography are as bad as any rise in sea level. The thousands of acres of farmland buried under the highways, linking the thousands of acres buried under sprawling ticky-tacky box suburbs, to the thousands of acres of sprawling malls and shopping centres are a terrible loss to our global commons. The degradation of wilderness caused by the ‘recreation’ of thousands of city dwellers who are loving our scenic sites to death is a direct result of the automobile. The pristine rainforests bulldozed aside to make rubber plantations for the tires, and the huge dumps of worn out tires that can only add to the carbon loading of the atmosphere when they’re burned or recycled are only one example of what we’ve lost in order to have two cars on the driveway.

One of the biggest indicators that nothing effective will ever happen to head off global warming is the fact that nobody wants to link it with our world’s crippling overpopulation. As a human society, we cause too much planetary degradation and climate change because there are just too many of us. We all want that upper middle class lifestyle and all the excessive consumption that goes with it, but the Earth cannot support such largess. A global population of a billion or less could live very well indeed, with much less effect on the Earth. The numbers we are headed for must expect to live with inadequate food, sub-standard housing, minimal health care, and token education in a world becoming less capable of providing the wealth enjoyed by a minority of societies since 1950.

Which brings me to the next shibboleth that must fall if we are to adapt our societies to an ever smaller share of an overstretched Earth. The idea of growth must be discarded. When the space available is already full, growth in population, growth in production, growth in consumption, growth in profits must end. Only in the childish reckoning of GDP, does growth of wealth appear to occur today, because at least half the spending considered in the reckoning is either dispensed to rectify the decay of capital infrastructure already built or is expended upon activities too trivial to contribute to real human well-being. The Chicago school of economics has done no more than equip humanity with the powerful tool that has created the inequities and consequent criminal behaviour, the pollution, the waste, the global climate change, the destruction of the environment, and the intractable social problems that threaten to make future lives less safe and less productive than those of Dickensian workhouse denizens. If we are to bring climate change, and all the other problems, to heel we must guide our economies with a great deal more care than we have since WWII.

The so-called economic miracles of free trade and trickle down economics have only been accomplished by robbing the Global Commons. Everyone has been indoctrinated with these supposed laws of economics, that are purely a result of decisions and procedures cast in stone in the temples of wealth. Economic laws are not immutable, since they are no more than the expression of the way we order our societies. What we have created we can surely uncreate. Much volatility of stock markets and commodity markets is caused by too easy credit – speculation on other people’s money. The margin rules that allow this are man made, market rules, that can be changed. Many oil analysts hold that oil prices are being inflated by the futures market for oil – surely everyone believes society would be better off with oil at $50 or $60 a barrel instead of $100.

These are just a summary of the obstacles that make attempts to stave off environmental disasters with feeble agreements like Kyoto, less than laughable. At work here are forces that can never be overthrown until Bangladesh and Holland vanish beneath the sea, until New York streets are populated by gondolas, like a restoration of Venice – itself to vanish beneath the Adriatic. In all of human experience, nothing has ever begun to get better until it has become totally intolerable. Two thousand five hundred years ago, Lao Tse said, “What is to be shrunken must first be stretched out”. Human hubris has been stretched to the limit, and it is only the workings of our inexorable saviour, climate change, that will oblige us to undertake remedial action that can set us back onto the path of real human progress.

The Courage to do the Right Thing.

2007-10-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

I noticed that the Calgary (Alberta) Chamber of Commerce has an evening with Colin Powell advertised. Since I don’t expect the Chamber is interested in military tactics or is planning to go to war, one has to wonder what the attraction between the two parties might be.

Perhaps they’re interested in learning how to be so impossibly loyal to the boss they will stand up before the whole world and spout any string of lies prepared for them. Perhaps they want to learn how to destroy their own credibility and chances for a future worthwhile career serving humanity. Perhaps they’re just interested in tragedies.

Let’s face it, Colin Powell, for a few critical days, had the power to examine the information he was being fed with the critical eye of a military man trained not to be fooled by false intelligence, and refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war. At the time, I fervently hoped he would have the cohones to stand up in the UN and say, “I cannot read this crap, because I just don’t believe it is in the best interest of my country or the people of the world to start a war on these premises.”

But he didn’t.

Game over. He was given the final test . . . and he failed.

Today, it’s common knowledge in the whole world – and even the USA – that George Bush’s war is not in the best interest of America, let alone the 650,000 Iraqis who have died as a result of it. A man in the highest public office anywhere in the world may expect one day to be faced with a decision that will either place him in the history books as a paragon for perpetual emulation or as an ignominious failure. It comes along with the ambition and the life training. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gorbachev, are just a few of those who had the experience – to do the right thing or else the thing expected of them.

They passed. Those who pass the test are easy to celebrate, but what does one do with the rest?

What in heaven’s name will the Republican Party do with George W. Bush after the 2008 election? Hide him in a closet? Past presidents are generally celebrated as elder statesmen of their parties – always in demand to speak words of wisdom to the young and the new recruits. But George Bush? The very thought of his fractured speaking style and ignorance being paraded across the airwaves or at $100 a plate functions for the next umpteen years boggles the mind. Not that it isn’t poetic justice as the corollary of the Carl Rove plan to make the Republicans the only party to send presidents to the White House for the foreseeable future.

With George Bush on show. With Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, Fehr, Abrams, and all the rest at large and walking around in public as if they earned their freedom it will likely be impossible for the Republicans to capture any significant political power in the next half dozen or so elections.

May I offer a suggestion? The next US president will be faced with the task of dealing with things like extraordinary rendition, the suspension of habeas corpus, and Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo? Now there’s a site where those jokers could live out the rest of their lives – at government expense – without being an embarrassment to anyone. With all of them in Gitmo, the decent and honourable Americans can roll up their sleeves and set to work restoring the honour and good name of the country that the Bush regime has so cavalierly besmirched. With any kind of good fortune, they will even find it possible to repair the damage to the Constitution and the corridors of power in Washington that such an aberration will not be possible again.

G-8 trumps Kyoto?

2007-06-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

The G-8 meeting didn't save the world from melting, but it offered more promise than this skeptic, at least, expected. I'm not a climate change skeptic – I'm a ‘doing anything about it' skeptic. Let's face it, everyone who was reluctant to make a sacrifice for the future could point to the big flaw in the Kyoto Protocol.

Since the recent G-8, we have some reason to hope that the most problematic developing nations will be drawn into the next phase of carbon emission reductions. Within a few years, China will overtake the USA to become the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Cutting emissions from the earlier signatories was, unfortunately, a futile gesture until China and India were committed to full participation in any future protocol. There is a good chance that the proposed talks under UN auspices will result in those committments.

So now we have the possibility of full world participation, and with the date 2050 becoming headlined, we have the time to develop intelligent plans and bring them into operation. Let's face it – the Kyoto Protocol had everybody going off half cocked. Not to blame the signatories especially, except in letting those industries and others with vested interests in burning carbon fuels gain a foothold to stonewall.

If we proceed from here with a bit more wit, the naysayers will have the ground cut from under their feet. The so-called climate scientists who took money from Big Oil and Big Coal to pretend that the evidence of climate change was anything but an condemnation of our burning fossil fuels no longer have credibility – let them slink away to freeze in the dark.

What are the parameters for progress? Firstly the development of fuel technologies that will make it unnecessary for the world to burn carbon-containing fuels beyond some fixed date in the definable future. Carbon-containing fuels include coal, oil, natural gas, wood, methane, ethanol, and all the biodiesels that are attracting so much attention. Let me be specific – the governments who push ethanol and biodiesel as a solution to the problem are obfuscating and obscuring the truth. In a word – lying. The move is, at best, a political attack on the power of the oil producing countries in the Middle East.

What energy sources do we have to replace them? The sun and the sun driven systems are important – solar power, hydro power, wind power, tidal power. The earth itself contains enough heat in its core to power our societies for millions of years – geothermal power development is a must-do. Why are the oil people obstructing this? The systems would require deep holes drilled into the Earth's crust – and drilling holes is their forte.

A very big requirement, especially during the forty year change-over I'm suggesting, is an alternate fuel for our transportation. The most attractive is hydrogen, both burned in combustion power units and employed as a fuel in fuel cells. Hydrogen doesn't come free, but it is the most abundant element in the universe. Ours would have to come from water and we need a source of abundant, cheap electrical power to split the hydrogen from water. Despite all the problems associated with the industry it seems that nuclear power would have to provide the majority of this electrical energy.

Now, don't scream at me. I know all about the bogeyman scenarios. Despite all the fuss about the Three Mile Island accident, it must be stated that the safety systems of the culprit reactor worked as they were supposed to do and prevented a melt-down. At Chernobyl, the much hairier Russian design was contained – if at great cost to the volunteers who gave their lives to tame the reactor fire. The Ukrainian coal mines have had a much greater loss of life that happened at Chernobyl, and twenty one years later the monitoring of the radiation effects of the fire have shown the damage to environment and humans has been less than feared at the time.

The problem of spent fuel rods is not insoluble, despite all the shouting. The Canadian Candu heavy water reactors can take the spent fuel rods from the rest of the industry's light water and gas cooled reactors and use them as its fuel – thus lowering the radioactivity problem of the spent rods to a degree. If the world had a ratio of (I believe) a Candu reactor to every five of theirs, the spent fuel rods could all be utilized. Not that the spent rods from a Candu are completely safe, but they are safer.

The radioactivity of the spent rods produces heat. The simplest nuclear power generators aboard spacecraft are not reactors, they simply use the heat of radiation to send a propellant fluid through a generator turbine. Thousands of tons of spent rods getting hot underground as they decay? I think even James Watt could have figured out how to make use of them.

The sweetheart solution would of course be the development of a cheap and hazard free fusion powerplant. I well remember all the optimistic drawings in the New Scientist I used to buy as a teenager showing how the plasma from the fusion could be directly converted to electrical power in a magnetohydrodynamic generator. Nice dream. Hasn't been much news out of the research labs for a number of years. Are they making progress? I'm getting pessimistic enough to guess that the only fusion power we will ever use will come from that big bright object in the sky. It's the machine that put all that fossil fuel underground in the first place – seems only right that it should play the major part in weaning us away from it.

Steven Harper – our War prime minister.

2007-05-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

In recent weeks the people of Afghanistan have undertaken another initiative to increase the possibility for peace in their country. That should surely be a development that the Canadian people and government would welcome. Why then is our prime minister one of those attempting to muscle the Afghans into continuing the war? That is the real purpose of his – and other NATO leaders'– recent visits to the country.

This last New Year's Eve, the lower chamber of the Afghan parliament passed a bill granting amnesty to all Afghans who had been involved in any acts considered war crimes during the past quarter century. This bill was the basic requirement for the Afghan people to be able to put the wars of the past behind them and work toward peace in their own land.

The amnesty gave rise to intense political activity that lead to the formation of the United Front early last month. The platform of the United Front calls for a parliamentary form of government, it aims to reduce the powers of the president to appoint regional governors, and to overhaul the electoral system into one of proportional representation. It also believes in dialogue, reconciliation, and power-sharing. This initiative has brought together many of the leaders of the Northern Alliance, who defeated the Taliban, but it also includes members of the Khalqi from the communist erea, and even leaders who have been associated with the Taliban. This diffuse group could well reach agreements that remove the dictatorial powers the American designed constitution gave to Hamid Karzai – which apparently displeases the American administration very much.

M.K. Bhadrakumar in Asia Times Online says, "The amnesty move has deprived the US of the one weapon that it wielded for blackmailing the "warlords" into submission . . . powerful leaders of the Northern Alliance groups, the mujhideen field commanders, and petty local thugs alike. The prospect of a war-crime tribunal was held like a Damocles' sword over any recalcitrant Afghan political personality. In the able hands of former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, it did wonders while ensuring Hamid Karzai's election as president and in consolidating US dominance in Afghanistan."

The Afghans appreciate our help in reforming their army and training their police. They welcome development aid, when it actually performs that service instead of feeding corruption. They deplore the indisciminate bombing by the US air force on civilians and suspects alike. They need help to remove their farmers' dependency on the poppy crop – not the trash and burn policy of the American and British forces. They would rather have dialogue with the moderate elements of the Taliban than see the NATO offensives bring all-out war to the southern provinces. It is their country – we have no right to ignore their wishes.

The very fact of the subsequent high level visits by NATO leaders from Europe and North America to speak of continuing the ‘pacification action' and the soft bribery of ‘development' proves that a peace in Afghanistan that sidelines their own interests is not to their liking. Note that the most involved European NATO countries all have a past record of colonialism and a strong interest in having some measure of influence over the export of the ever increasing production of oil and natural gas from Afghanistan's northern neighbours.

This is the background that all Canadians should look at when they evaluate Steven Harper's visit. Even his words parrot those of his puppet-master George Bush – "no deadlines for the removal of our troops". Canada has a long history of sending troops overseas to keep the peace, as well as to support our allies and friends who are in dire peril. The only interests put in dire peril by the Afghans' own peace initiative are those of the intervention forces. We have recently celebrated the sacrifice of over 60,000 Canadians who gave their lives in the First World War. How well do we honour their memory by participating in the occupation and control of Afghanistan?

Do you see Steven Harper singing more and more from George Bush's song book?

2007-05-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

The Opposition parties in Parliament are demanding answers to questions of coverup and carelessness for the welfare of Afghans and all Harper can do is beat the patriotic drum and pretend compassion for the men and women he will send to their deaths in Afghanistan. How dare the opposition ask for information, when he is doing his best to hide the realities from the electorate?

He's also trying to hide the realities from those who will pay in blood for his policies. As yet, they don't get it, but they will.

It would be a beautiful world if the Afghans could enjoy a society as enlightened as ours, but please open your eyes. Those in the Afghan resistance will stay in the country for the rest of their lives – NATO forces will move out as soon as some plausible benchmark can be claimed. Pakistan will always border Afghanistan and have a vital interest in the people governing there — when the troops leave, Canada will likely not even have a direct air link to Kabul. The Indians also share a border with Afghanistan and have as much interest in seeing a government in Kabul remaining independent from Pakistani interference as is the converse. What hope for the dawning of this beautiful world?

The Americans have attempted to play the Great Game in the region against the Russians and Chinese. They want to ensure the pipelines from the barely tapped oilfields to the north go straight across Afghanistan to the ocean and to whatever markets the Americans deem appropriate. In the process they want to prevent Iranian oil pipelines taking oil to India. The Russians are winning so far – using oil and gas from Kazakhstan for their own consumption while they sell Russian oil and gas to Europe. The Chinese are also looking to gain control of these resources just across their border. What business does Canada have in becoming involved in this mess?

European NATO countries are in Afghanistan in order to exert some measure of influence into these cross currents of oil diplomacy – because they are dependent upon oil and gas imports. Not so Canada. While the Chretien government joined in when the Taliban government was overthrown in order to lessen the opprobrium of the States and the pro-US apple polishers in Canada; as a country, we have never accepted that our nation has to toe the line to George Bush's war policies. That is until the Harper government took power. Someone should tell Harper that a sovereign country is not an Enron or some other vehicle of convenience for his political games, but a nation of people who have a right to chart their own destiny.

I know perfectly well the present government has never owned up and admitted their slavish adherence to US right-wing objectives, but I don't expect them to. I have lived too long under Tory rule in Alberta to ever expect an honest answer or even any answer at all that is more than a whitewash or a shut-up. Steven Harper is an MP from Calgary for a reason. The electorate there has been well trained to sit up and bark when the Tories offer a tidbit. Many of the Albertans who vote Conservative – both Provincially and Federally – know more about the US system of government than Canada's. Many of them look to the south rather than to Canada for their ambitions – until the US bites them, as with the mad cow border closure. The Harper administration is essentially a Calgary operation – the same one which fleeces the whole of Canada with inflated oil prices at the pumps. The corporate policy is profit and to hell with the people who live in the country – be it Canada or Afghanistan.

Open your eyes, Canada.

Tim Hortons Invades Afghanistan

2007-04-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between trying to change a society by force and trying to change it by undercutting its parameters? If it's changed, the inhabitants of that society are faced with different modes of existence than they had before – and they may well be ones that they do not welcome. If it was done to you or I, we would probably react against it. So why do we act so surprised when the people of Afghanistan respond to our generous acts of kindness ( purely for their own good, of course) with violence?

I suspect there were very few people in the world who admired the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that held power before 2001. The lack of infrastructure to educate the young and protect their health, alone, were remnants of an older, dark period of human history. The conditions under which women lived were (and in many places, still are) a crime against humanity. But it was a native grown and developed Afghan society that something approaching half the population appeared to be comfortable with. What proportion of the Afghan population are comfortable with the present situation? 20%? How many people in the world are admiring the regime the western Crusaders have set up in its place?

What differences are our Canadian forces making to that ongoing disaster the Bush administration set in motion? We are certainly not changing peoples lives and minds by the multitude of successes in development our people are alleged to be there for. Wow, a new road out of Kandahar – but it's not a very long road – and it only serves to keep out troops away from a much more dangerous route they had to traverse before we built it. Advantage for the Afghans? Somewhere around zilch. Schools – even for girls – are something to be proud of, but are we providing education for young people who will lift up the Afghanistan of the future or for a new crop of refugees who will flee from a repressive and corrupt culture that looks all too likely to reassert itself?

Without the Afghans themselves accepting a new mindset – one which sees them welcome the influences and processes of the world beyond their borders – our presence is doomed to failure. There is only one way to have them accept new ways – they must see themselves gaining benefits from them that they never had before. You would think that our Canadian troops, with a history of peacekeeping, would have been naturals to work on hearts and minds in this way. The Germans are doing it, in the North, the Dutch are doing it next door to Kandahar, but what are the Canadians doing? Following the Darth Vader's Star Trooper methods of the American forces – that's what. You don't win hearts and minds from inside a tank.

The Bush regime is obsessed with drugs. The War on Drugs is a huge business in the USA – millions of Republicans are wedded to it. Although the Europeans have long been arguing for NATO to buy the Afghan's cash crop of opium poppies and use them to end a scarcity in our own pharmaceutical production – the Americans and their pit bulls, the Brits, have been burning the fields and ruining the Afghan farmers' livelihoods. Starving people find it hard to think kindly about the foreigners who have brought them to that state. People who have had loved ones strafed and killed by Warthogs or bombed by F-16s are not likely to change the mindset that has had them pick up a weapon and fight back against every invader who has ever crossed their borders.

Who should be the people voting about the length of time our Canadian troops will serve in Afghanistan? Not Tories – not Steven Harper with his rose coloured spectacles filled with images of his right wing idols in Washington. Not even Canadian Liberals, New Democrats, Greens, and Bloc Quebecois. The Afghans should be the ones to vote – the people, and not the regime that was foisted upon them by Washington. And if we want them to invite our men and women to stay in their country longer because they are doing some real good – they'd better be doing some good first.

Support our troops – sure, when they are doing something Canadians can support.

The U.S. System is Failing

2007-01-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

I remember when Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, that Americans of all stripes congratulated themselves and declared, "the system works." Well, now it's the twenty-first century and quite apparent to the whole world that the system does not work.

There is no mechanism to fire an incompetent head of state nor to pass a vote of non-confidence that results in the fall of an incompetent administration. In most of the countries with parliamentary or modified parliamentary systems, there would have been a regime change in Washington before now. In a perfect system it would have been before 2003.

The system has failed twice in placing George W Bush in an absolute position where his stupidity cannot be controlled. The first was in electing him at all.

Now to be fair to the US founding fathers, they could not foresee the deep seated and frighteningly effective brainwashing possible when almost all the media is controlled by one power hungry oligarchy. Most Americans accept having all of their news fed to them by commercial media – particularly TV – owned and controlled by the same corporate interests who buy the politicians with their campaign funding. If you doubt me, take a look at how short a time it took for everyone outside the US to recognise the extent of the disaster Bush's war in Iraq has been – and how long it took honest Americans to reach the same understanding.

I don't believe the thinking public outside the US is necessarily any smarter than those inside. The difference is in the quality of the information they have received. The ultra-right has long attributed propaganda only to government operated newspapers, radio, and TV. Now the extent of that lie is clear for anyone to see. The propaganda perpetrated today by the rightist media in the States is every bit as bad as Soviet propaganda during the Cold War or Joseph Goebbel's lies of the Second World War. In intent if not in rhetoric.

Bush's ‘new strategy' for Iraq would be hilariously funny, if it did not mean more tragedy for everyone involved. When you're in a hole, you have to be really really stupid to dig yourself deeper. But Bush's intent is clear, and has been pointed out by many commentators. He hopes to keep the lid on until the end of his presidency – in the hope that history will blame his successor for the defeat. I don't think history will be that stupid. No one blamed Gerald Ford for Viet Nam.

While the situation in Iraq is as hopeless as all the commentators I was reading – back before March 2003 – were predicting it would become, it surely isn't insoluble. The problem is, that nothing can be done as long as the cold hand of the present regime is on the tiller in Washington. Without the men in white coats coming to take Bush and Cheney away, the worst outcome is entirely possible. When the Saudis and Iranians move into the civil war instead of only their proxies, and the US Army is cut off in its strongholds with its supply routes cut by outright warfare, it will be too late to change the policy.

All Honourable Men: Eulogy for Saddam.

2006-12-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

Friends, Readers, citizens, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Saddam, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Saddam. The noble Bush

Hath told you Saddam was dangerous;

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Saddam answer'd it.

Here under tutelage and cooperation

Of CIA was a dictator set up and empower'd

To enslave a people, lest they disturb the wealth

Of many corporate oligarchs. But he would not be bound,

and so brought down in Shock and Awe,

Along with 650,000 innocent people.

But yesterday the word of Saddam might

Have stood against the world; now he lie there,

And none so poor to do him reverence.

O readers! If I were disposed to stir

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,

I should do Bush wrong, and Cheney wrong,

Who you all know are honourable men.

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose

To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you,

Than I will wrong such honourable men.

But his voice was silenced for a purpose;

Lest the complicity of Washington and

Many other capitals should lie reveal'd,

In the crimes his regime committed.

O! what a fall was there, my countrymen;

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,

Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.

O! Now you weep, and I perceive you feel

The dint of pity for the death of truth;

And loss of honour that we all were heir to.

Naked aggression used to steal the wealth

Of desert sand was all to our complicity;

And corruption of our laws in naked rendition

Were celebrated in Saddam as shamed captive

Carried to a faulty trial by vengeful enemies.

In upholding democracy and human rights,

Let us not overlook the wrongs done in our name,

And, on the eve of Eid, let us not forget

the crimes of those unpunish'd.

Firewall

2006-11-26T17:53:00.000-08:00

There was a Jewish joke going the rounds some years ago, which was told to me by a Jew. It went like this: If Moses was so smart, how come he led the Israelites to the only place in the Middle East that's not sitting on a pool of oil?

It seems to be an axiom accepted without question by almost everyone in the world, that what I hold, I own. If I want more than others, I merely have to hold more than others. Merit, wisdom, and even sanctity have nothing to do with it.

Consider for a moment, the case of two babies born at the same hour in different parts of the world. One is born in a mud hut in Africa and the other in a hovel in Kazakhstan – one in a region that holds no wealth in its bedrock and the other on a pool of oil. Which of them deserves revenue, scant share though it might be, from the extraction and sale of that oil? Why should one deserve it more than the other, since neither can have established a prior claim? Why should only one have an undisputed share in a grab for sovereignty over that oil when they are both equal citizens of the indivisible planet that holds it?

The principle that a society, or a group of people, should exercise the rights to something they have created by their own effort seems indisputable. The idea that any specific human group owns something which they did not create is an entirely different matter. Such a distinction even finds its way into the arcane subject of International Law (amazing though it may be that the enshrined record of human stupidity should result in something of rational sense) where under the 1982 Convention, the resources of the open oceans, beyond any territorial limit is "the common heritage of mankind". (Except that criminal fishing and whaling corporations do not recognize the principle; and the USA is not a party to the Convention.)

Back in the Dark Ages in Canada, a collective contest of greed and xenophobia resulted in the lower orders of government (those organs where collective cupidity and foolishness exercise more force than statesmanship and wisdom) – the provinces – being awarded jurisdiction over that which they had neither created nor improved – the minerals under the ground – rather than recognizing that the rights of nationality – of Canadian Citizenship – were being degraded in the process. Now, to be fair, one must note that in our national taxation structure (indubitably every bit as arcane and irrational as International Law) there is a degree of sharing whereby each jurisdiction receives some cut of the pie.

In the case of oil extracted in Alberta, the Provincial Government and its population base gets the largest share in terms of taxes and royalties, while the Federal Government and its population base receives a share of the sale of the refined oil in excise taxes, and even that poor baby in Africa (who has made no less effort to be worthy of this largess from the planet than any Albertan baby) receives a tiny pittance in the form of that conscience money called Foreign Aid. You see, even if you are the most rabid Firewall-loving Albertan, you are sharing a tiny portion of your unearned windfall with the rest of the planet. The principle – precedent in law, if you will – has been established. It's not all yours. You are bound by your heritage as a human being to share your fortune with all the other inhabitants of the planet. The only factor remaining undecided is that of proportion.

Some people reading this, who have no interest in the parochial politics of Alberta, may wonder if I have a point to all this airie argument. Well, I do, if you might want to consider the lessons from a provincial sideshow in one very cold and obscure corner of our planet.

In Alberta, a jurisdiction where democracy has been denigrated and downgraded for more than fifteen years, the succession of an almost inherent right to govern is being decided by less than 3% of the population in a party political leadership vote. To be truthful, any jackass and his mother could gain the power to cast a vote in that election if he wished to flirt with eternal damnation – or rampant hypocrisy – and buy a Tory membership. And, believe it or not, the supporters of the most selfish, xenophobic, and anti-social policies being championed have elevated (if one can use the term so imprecisely) their champion to second place in the running. A man who is the originator – along with other, equally distasteful individuals – of a proposal to place a firewall around Alberta to keep the consideration of every other Canadian citizen out.

These people seem to think they have an inherent right to keep all the money they can grab from the over-exploitation of the oil sands (a generous gift of the planet), while spewing all the pollution and harmful carbon dioxide out upon the rest of Canada – indeed, upon the world. These are fools who suppose their own good fortune is some gift of the gods, while conveniently forgetting that we are all units of an indivisible economic society where the labour and suffering of the poorest is an essential component – through the invisible working of the marketplace – of the ease and comfort of the richest.

One has to hope that, at long last, the outrageous fallacies of their faith will be exposed (by this token democracy) as the dirty scam they are, and that the Firewall they wish to create will mainly serve to keep their baseness contained.

Returning to the Source

2006-09-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

Through all the last six of the Bush years, I clung to the hope that the essential goodness and sense of the majority of the American people would eventually prevail. Perhaps it's beginning to happen. As more and more agencies are casting off the shroud of Presidential Infallibility and stating the truths that non-Americans have known for most of those years, it looks more likely that the power of neo-Conservatism will be broken for many years to come. After the elections this year and the fading away of the lame duck over the next two, real democratic forces can begin to repair the damage done by failed ideology and failed militarism.

Not so in Canada, unfortunately. With the usual capacity for the comprehensionally challenged to be years behind their more alert fellows, we have just entered into a bout of selfish, narrow minded Conservatism, with a government whose members refuse to learn from the mistakes made south of the border.

How long must Canada march in the wrong direction, like Dad's Army following the out-of-tune efforts of a Keystone Cop band? I'd suggest only until the very first opportunity to bring down the heirs of Ralph Klein in a confidence vote.

In a report from Afghanistan, in today's Toronto Star, it's encouraging to hear voices from the Canadian troops that they are balking against following the self-defeating policies of the Americans. If our soldiers hear enough encouragement from home about reconstruction, instead of destroying the homes and livelihoods of the Afghan people, we might become a positive force in the NATO command. Just keep that jackass Mackay from reinforcing the failed Bush strategy. From Europe comes the excellent idea of buying the poppy crops for our own medicinal uses, instead of destroying the fields and turning the farmers into enemies. Even ‘Steve' will recover his overpowering urge to self-interest if more than half the country refuse to follow the right wing folly in lockstep.

What do combat missions achieve when the opponent can replace casualties faster than cluster bombs can create them? The same report mentioned that the Afghan's greatest hatred is reserved for air attacks that kill combatants and civilians with equal ease. That response was also seen in Lebanon recently. Ever since the 20s, Western governments have opted to fight South Asian enemies the cowardly way by attacking them from the air. It has never worked in the past, and today it's clear that it turns more friends and neutrals into enemies than any other method of warfare. It's time to recognize that truth and keep the fly-boys at home where they can create less collateral damage.

Let's look toward a new Canada that returns to proven success and an honoured name. 2006 can be the start of a new resurgence of the kind of Liberalism that focuses on promoting the Common Good above economic dogma. Our opponents are in a position of strength today, but Lao Tzu noted more than two thousand years ago, "He who is to be weakened, must first be made strong." The Tories have only one direction to go. We may have foundered in our own hubris in the past, but we have the opportunity to weed such arrogance from our ranks. Super Weekend is the start of the road back.

We do not Negotiate with Terrorists.

2006-08-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

One can understand the point of view of the Israeli citizenry, who have plunged their heads into a noose and are desperate for a way out. Unfortunately everything they have done under their past two governments have dragged them further in. What will it take before they realize that when you are in a hole – the first requirement is to stop digging?

The first line of defence when protecting an injustice that benefits one's self is to deny the existence of the injustice. When you have taken over someone's country and are bent upon destroying their way of life, the last thing you can do is acknowledge they might have a legitimate grievance. Hence, you look for the first pretext you can find to marginalize them and their concerns.

When the dominant group in any society declares they will not recognize a particular group or enter into discussions with them – declaring they consider them to be outside the bounds of the rules they themselves have drawn up – they slam the door of exclusion even harder. This is the act of the powerful against the helpless. The arrogant refusal to consider the grievances of others as even legitimate can only lead to confrontation and violence.

When you have taken away all acceptable means for satisfying your opponent's concerns he has very few options left open. The only choices inevitably lie outside of the rules you have declared to be acceptable. Either your opponent caves in and becomes your slave, or he chooses to strike back – perforce in the only way you have left to him.

When you take over the best parts of a land that the initial diplomatic covenant said you must share, as the Zionists did in Israel, you have created the basis for war. The Balfour Declaration is often cited as the legal ground for the creation of the Jewish state, but it set out the provision that, ". . . it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine . . .". To most of the population of the world, that condition does not appear satisfied. It also seems self-evident that if a genuine attempt had been made to avoid prejudicing the rights of the displaced Palestinians, a great deal of war and bloodshed could have been avoided.

But the Israeli governments described the Arabs as intransigent and unappeasable. They systematically deprived them of the grounds for presenting their case, in the United Nations and elsewhere. So, when the Israeli state undertook to claim and protect the proceeds of this marginalizing of the Palestinians, it was faced with the problem of keeping the ill-gotten gains out of the equation. The first requirement was to deny the displaced persons their right to plead as equals. It was necessary to label them as terrorists.

Israeli governments should be experts on recognizing terrorists. Menachem Begin, Prime Minister in the 70s and 80s, was leader of the Irgun from February 1943 – a declared terrorist group by the British government, whose subjects they were murdering. What, the Brits don't count? Then how is it that they do count when the circumstances please you? (To be fair, the older and wiser Begin was responsible for some good in those administrations.) Without getting into a pointless argument about who did what first, and who was worst – I think we can accept that neither the Jews nor the Arabs have any claim to innocence in the line of terrorism. (And for a more recent example one need only look at the IAF's recent attacks on the civil infrastructure of Lebanon, and on the Lebanese population. Many World groups consider their actions to constitute State Terrorism.)

The recent war against Hezbollah and the Lebanese population has been an unmitigated disaster for Israel. Not only were none of their declared war aims realized, but the residual sympathy the World had for the plight of Israeli civil society has been diminished. (Here, I have to add that the main Israeli war aim – to destroy the long ranged missiles provided to Hezbollah by Iran was largely successful. But we mustn't take the cover off that can of worms – it reveals the stated cause of Israeli actions to have been no more than a pretext.) Without descending into name calling, I think the biggest issue is to forestall any resumption of the fighting and any resumption of the murder of civilians on both sides.

To do that, one has to talk. While it's evident that some talks are ongoing, carried out by proxies and under cover, at some point – in order to legitimize those discussions – one must necessarily talk openly. Face to face. One must negotiate. No more marginalizing one group as terrorists or the other as Zionists. No preposterous denial of the historical sufferings of either. It is going to be necessary for the one to stand down the terrorist cadres, and for the others to take the parameters of the discussions out of the hands of Zionists. We can surely have faith that together the Jews and the Arabs could make the region flower and be fruitful – both have the demonstrated ability. Come on, guys – get at it. The World has no patience for anyone's covenant with the past – the World wants to see a covenant for the future.

Move over Pyrrhus

2006-08-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

So George – you know the one; lies, muddles words, and makes a Hereford cow look clever – is stridently claiming victory in Lebanon for his henchmen, the Israelis. Doesn't he know that no amount of wishing makes unpleasant truths go away?

The Israelis succeeded in driving away friends and supporters they had relied upon for years. No need to quote numbers here, the reaction around the world says it all.

Hezbollah increased its own ranks of friends and supporters in even greater proportion. Even non- Shiite Lebanese are grudgingly supportive – and the Arab world has found their first heroes since 1949.

The Israeli Army proved incapable of defeating the Jihadists. When it came down to man against man, they proved – once more, for Crissake – that morale and determination count for more than smart weapons.

Far from being destroyed, Hezbollah is the first force into the destroyed areas helping the civilian population rebuild. Disarm them? Who is going to have the guts?

Once again, the U.S. axis has demonstrated that hi-tech weaponry and massive aerial bombardment only makes their enemies more resolute and more intransigent. Shock and Awe lasts for hours – anger and hate last for millennia.

The purchase of airforce jets looks more and more like a losing proposition when their every action results in losing the important PR contest. "What did you do in the war, Daddy?" "I bombed Lebanese civilians, dear." Didn't these arrogant Israelis ever hear of Guernica?

The Israeli Army found their hugely expensive Merkava tanks could only usefully serve as ambulances. Wait till the U.S. Forces in Iraq learn the same thing about the Abrams when the civil war there really heats up. Pity it doesn't have the compartment capable of carrying stretchers.

An eye opener for America's friends in the region who have imagined that U.S. promises of support meant something. The Americans' client government in Beirut was assured it had the support of the U.S. when it took over from the Syrian backed regime. Where did it go when the Israelis turned on them? Hello Riyadh. Hello Amman. Hello Cairo. Hello Baghdad. Are you reading me?

Some readers may be discounting my words as those of some fanatical supporter of extremist Islam. Not me. I worked in an Arab country for more than four years, and the intimate contact with their mule-like orneryness made me an ardent supporter of Israel in 1967, and 1973. I long to see the Jihadists lose their resolve and their fanaticism, but the Cheney/Bush regime is the least likely administration in the whole world able to bring that about. George, Dick, and Rummy and their policies have to be worth more than half a dozen armored divisions – to Al-Qaida.

Whose Murder is Worse?

2006-08-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

How many Lebanese and Palestinian children have to die before Israel considers itself secure?

All our government and corporate media propaganda attempts to describe the Arab side as a force of murderous strangers hiding themselves among a civilian population. That is a lie. The people and the fighters are one and the same, and the Israelis have made them so by their continual acts of state-run military violence against them for two decades.

The most tragic thing is that every imagined success in their supposed war on terror merely increases the level of hatred against them. When every bomb kills a dozen, and creates two dozen new enemies, it is evident that continuing this evil policy will ultimately end in their own destruction. The Jewish people need friends who can save them from themselves. It's quite evident that the failed regime in Washington is not that friend. It's becoming equally evident that the uncaring clique in Ottawa who have turned their backs on Canada's role to stand up for a just and lasting peace in the region are no better.

You must remember how powerful a symbol the image was of a single man against a tank in Tien An Min Square. That symbol is now being renewed in Lebanon a thousand times, and is before the eyes of the whole world. When will these leaders bent on killing see that every dead Hezbollah fighter has a million mourners? Their policy is now, and will always be, self-defeating.

Before Canada loses every bit of respect the free world has for it, these Tories, so arrogant in their profound ignorance, must listen to the voices of people wiser than themselves and retract their words of support for war and military might. Before they take Canada marching in lockstep with the Bush administration's rush into a new disaster and the magnification of destruction wherever it meddles, we need to have a lengthy parliamentary debate on our foreign policy. An honest debate.

We need the Common's Foreign Affairs Committee given the power to call unaligned witnesses and listen to the words of all those who have evidence to give – not just hand-picked toadies who will parrot the Government's sympathies. It's easy to see why Harper chose to represent a constituency in Calgary, these are the tactics which have been perfected by the Klein autocrats over the past fourteen years.

This new cycle of hatred will only engender another, greater cycle to come. At least let us take Canada out of this never-ending path to disaster – not to turn our backs on either side, but to win ourselves the right to take a persuasive stance between them. Both sides in this conflict seem to want to rain down destruction until there is no civilization, no humanity left to save. But out of this wreckage will come new children, and a new tomorrow. Let Canada be there with the moral right to teach a better future than its present leaders envision.

Dodge the Morons

2006-07-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

Summer is upon us and the highways are thick with traffic. Now, it is a matter of my observation that most people are incompetent – some on occasion and some perpetually. No matter what the field of activity, some few individuals excel, a few more muddle along fairly well, and the great multitude should be kept out by walls, electric fences, and Dobermans.

Cartooning is a growth industry in our society, both on paper and video media. Ninety percent of these cartoonist produce drawings of a quality that I could duplicate when I was seven – and I'm not an artist. The storylines are even more juvenile. The more people who participate in any activity, the quality of the result declines. Take elections – 'nuff said. Q.E.D.

Bread is not only a staple of life, but an addictive substance – especially when taken aromatic, fresh from the oven. Some people who bake bread are true bakers, some can serve up an adequate loaf, and others . . . well, the dog likes it. I'm lazy – I let the bread machine carry out the initial stages, and then take out the dough for my own kneading, rising and baking. I experiment with extra ingredients and quantities of yeast or rich goodies that the dumb old bread machine could never handle. But my loaves are quite dense at the bottom and float away into airie bubbles at the top crust; they also rise inordinately – so much that no earthly bread knife can span them. I must admit, as a baker, I'm incompetent.

Now we come to drivers. Ordinary drivers of campers, motorhomes, cars, SUVs, trucks, buses, motorcycles, trucks with trailers, U-Hauls, tent trailers, bicycles, mule carts, carriages and four, prairie schooners, logging trucks, grain trucks, cowboys in cattle liners – in short the whole damned schmuck of misdirected iron that clog our summer roads and make the most innocent of journeys to sunday school or to the bar to get smashed a positive bloody hazard until the blessed snow returns and sweeps them all away.

How can a poor body find safety amid such chaos? Firstly – don't go where everyone else goes. Don't travel when everyone else does. Long weekend? Stay home and catch up on all those damned jobs that have been hanging over you since last summer. Four lane superhighway on a summer weekend – deathtrap. Take the old highway that it replaced, or even better the gravel roads that hide behind the fields of ripening grain and burgeoning pot. Oh, we're not in BC? Sorry, I'll get on. It's true that gravel roads have a habit of petering out into fields or at unbridged rivers, but what the heck – the scenery's beautiful and you've all the time in the world.

What? You don't have all the time in the world? You have to keep the pedal to the metal from six in the morning until nine at night to make it to the cottage for a relaxing weekend. Buddy, you have more money than brains. You are probably the moron who's most likely to pass over the brow of a hill and appear in front of my own car, in my lane, at ninety per, when I'm out on my appointed rounds. You don't damnwell belong on my roads. You don't belong on anyone's roads. Buy a new lawn set and keep everyone safer.

Smart Questions

2006-07-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

There is a website and an organization called ‘dropping knowledge' (the lack of caps is their idea) on the Internet ( www.droppingknowledge.org ) which is a global initiative that seeks to turn people's apathy into activity. I think bloggers are into that idea.

Everyone is invited to post questions on the organization's website that will be answered (or discussed) by a hundred people around a table of free voices in Berlin on September 9th . It's a pleasant change from inviting people to send letters to newspapers and other publications, in which they express little more than their own lack of knowing what constitutes an answer, or even an argument.

Bloggers might take note of this revolutionary proposal, but then – we are all so knowledgeable we have little need to ask questions of anyone. But I was tempted, and by delving deeply into the fringe areas of my own vast experience, I was able to drag out a piece of opinion that I could loosely re-frame into the form of a question. I await its appearance on the website with great anticipation and will no doubt check daily (nay, hourly) for votes of approval from other surfers who find it relevant and likely to change the world.

Because changing the world appears to be the hope of the organizers and questioners. A noble cause if ever there was one – the ashtrays are full on the one we have. A brief surf through questions already posted revealed a whole range of offerings – from "What is the meaning of life?" to "Why do I always pick such poor boyfriends?" Who knows? Perhaps the answer to that question will lead to vastly improved mating practices among human populations and eliminate some of the losers we see wandering about, slack jawed, with their fathers' shorts on, and their caps on backwards.

They do have interesting and provocative material linked to the website. Take a look. A reduction in the apathy among our revered citizenry can't do any harm – except perhaps to dictatorial corporations, governments, and other elites. We would do well to practice our knitting while waiting for the tumbrils to roll again. We haven't had a really bang-up, world shaking, first class revolution for almost a hundred years. The last one was against the entrenched power of a financial and political elite and lord knows we have enough of those.

If you're tired of being lied to by your ‘betters' it might be time to get off your fat, overfed butt, turn off the trash on TV, and look into sending a question of your own. You might just change the world.

The Suburban Plague

2006-06-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

From the Toronto Star, some signs of intelligence coming from the urban planners in Ontario. At long last a recognition that the suburban landscape with its dependence upon the automobile is detrimental to society – and more importantly, demonstrating the will to change things.

The "Places to Grow" Plan sets out a blueprint for population growth in the high density Southern Ontario region. I wish them well. As a distant neighbour of Calgary, I would sure like to see some of that intelligence transplanted to Alberta – I fully expect to see those ticky tacky boxes come spreading over the hills at me one day. I'm not going to hold my breath – intelligent Alberta government is an oxymoron.

The plan protects farmland from the spreading suburbs, makes use of higher density development in city cores, and emphasizes the growth of neighbourhoods with dwellings, services, and jobs located in closer proximity. The plan incorporates the switch from automobiles to public transit, which is certain to generate howls of outrage from your well-heeled car dealers, auto manufacturers, and the juvenile laddies who dote on their cars.

Suburbs! What on earth generates such slavish attachment to one and two hour commutes by car and the loss of weekend time to mowing a lawn? Grass should be only grown to feed something, not to waste water on, treat with poisonous chemicals, and then manicure to an inch high so that the clippings can be sent to landfills. Don't all those chappies with their baggy shorts and lawnmowers feel foolish out there? They should.

The growth of real communities, where everything a family needs is within walking distance would be within our grasp if suburbs gave way to higher density dwellings. A cousin of mine had a five minute stroll to work every morning because he was smart enough to buy into a development which had the light industry and housing close together. His daughter has a two hour drive into London to work since she bought her own home. When I was a youngster in a Southern England town, all the stores we needed were withing walking distance, and school was a seven minute train ride to the next.

Looking at Calgary, I've long thought that a change of regulations and an upgrade of utilities could hand a nice little nest-egg to older householders. Or to anyone who cared take advantage of owning land they didn't need. When the chore of looking after a hundred foot lot, while living on only half of it, becomes too great, the owner should be able to consider subdividing it, and providing space for another family in the mews, which was formerly a back lane. Older districts could be re-zoned successively, and their utility systems altered to allow for the doubling of population density. With a higher population density, frequent public transit could connect with the industrial parks.

It has to be better than sitting in an auto for hours. Go to it, Ontario. Maybe intelligence is catching.

The CSIS Way with Terrorists

2006-06-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

"Welcome to our security seminar entitled "Handling Terrorism". Now, as you all know, the demand for and the financial health of our security services has been markedly increased since 9/11. This course is intended to teach all of you to how to advance your careers in this expanded security environment.

"The general public has been brought into a high state of alert over threats to their safety and we must all do our utmost to ensure it stays that way. This prioritization of security services has not been easy to achieve, and so I'm sure you're all aware how vigilant we must be to ensure the threat stays fresh in the general public's mind.

"Now, there is a right and a wrong way to handle terrorism. The recent example of the arrest of seventeen Moslem terrorists in Ontario is a prime example of the way it should be done.

"First, you need your terrorist magnet. These are very hard to come by, so you must handle your terrorist magnet with great care. He must never become aware that you are using him. You must never let any of the incipient hotheads that he attracts become aware that their association with him has brought them under observation as well."

"But are you saying that these incipient terrorist people are not actual terrorists?'

"That's right, but they have the potential to become terrorists, and with a little care the security services can incubate these people until we have a credible terrorist cell."

"Isn't that entrapment?"

"Of course not! You have given us the first blatant example of the wrong way to handle terrorism. If you play your hand too soon, there will be nothing in it."

"Because there are no terrorists. Merely foolish hotheads."

"What are you? Some kind of idiot? They are all terrorists when they play their hands. The smart security service bides its time until the proper moment to swoop and round them all up."

"And when is that?"

"I'm glad you asked that question. You need two factors to gain the utmost security value out of handling terrorists. Firstly, you need a legislative atmosphere that's conducive to throwing vastly increased funding at the security services before you shoot your wad. If some pussy-footed government is in power that will merely send you a letter of commendation and pat you on the back . . . well, you get my drift. Don't waste all your hard work. Wait two years, if necessary. You need a government in power that has the same agenda as your security service – who know people are dangerous, their thoughts are dangerous, and that the first duty of government and a vigilant security agency is to ensure these people don't act out their thoughts."

"But isn't that what we did by allowing this hothead two years to gather others around himself and start making actual plots?'

"Not at all. We were merely gathering enough evidence to strike."

"I'm not sure . . . How do we tell the difference?"

"What are you – some kind of commie leftist? The difference is simple. When they do it – it's terrorism. When we do it – it's homeland security."

"Then what's that second factor we need?"

"You have to catch them with hard evidence before you strike. Explosives, fuses, cell phones – things like that."

"Cell phones?"

"Of course. To set off the bombs by remote control. That's how you know they're a terrorist cell."

"I see. Cell phones – terrorist cell. What next?"

"You need to set up some sting operations – posing as legitimate companies. Actually collecting bombs or bomb making material has never been easy, so the security services have to facilitate this."

"You mean the security services have to supply the terrorists with bomb making materials?"

"Of course. How else are we to catch them red-handed?"

"Isn't that –"

"No! It isn't anything! I'm getting tired of your yellow-bellied questions. Now, get one thing perfectly clear. We don't need to supply actual explosive material – just something they think is explosive material."

"But doesn't that destroy your case against them? They are no longer a de facto terrorist group if they can't perform terrorist acts."

"You again? Why don't you shut up? As long as we have sympathetic courts and sympathetic judges, the present legislation will work perfectly well. To be a terrorist, you only need to think like a terrorist – you don't actually have to be one."

"Unless – "

"Yeah, gotcha! I know what you were about to say. If the courts start following your leftist commie ideas and throw our charges out, you are turning the threat into something much more dangerous. We'd have to supply our terrorist suspects with real bombs and real explosives to make our case stick. See how terror escalates?"

"But we'd be doing the escalating."

"No, we wouldn't – we're preventing it. See this shoulder patch I'm wearing? It says "Security".

"We'd be preventing terrorism if we were to act before the first hothead influences and collects his little band of incipient hotheads."

"Nonsense. Now you're back to the wrong way to handle terrorism. What kind of publicity would we get out of that?"

What's real?

2006-05-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

I was working on the critique of another writer's novel draft this evening when I was struck by the gulf between the real world and an artificial one. She had penned a fine put-down of one of those young computer nerds who regard all those who don't give a damn for the latest hi-tech gadget as being some kind of throwback. You know, throwbacks like you who think driving into the back country is fun, or like me who thinks a person's life should be more than a collection of gadgets.

In the 90s, I spent a lot of time and energy digging my way into GPS technology that I thought might put me ahead of all the competition in my remote-location survey field. (It did for a while, before those with ten times my resources out-teched me, but enough of that.) Eventually I realized that specialist knowledge of a purely artificial - human devised system – actually leads one away from what is important to us as human beings. It's one thing to absorb technical information to earn a living, but quite another to model one's humanity upon it. The excitement of producing a clever piece of code, or developing a ground-breaking gadget is not abnormal – it's squarely in there with what makes us human – but it just isn't what makes life go around. Life is a grubby, mundane thing of same-old same-old, that has to be lived one minute at a time, and has to resonate with one's inner being and one's fellows to be worthwhile. Somehow, our activities don't mean a thing unless they touch others on a purely human level.

If you're reading this blog, you are probably trying to relate this to planning your next 4x4 trip into some new area, and wondering where the hell it fits. You'd probably laugh if I accused you of being a tree hugging nature lover – but face it – you see more of the raw world than all those mall rats and video game fanatics ever will. Give the world a few more turns and you could be the only people who see the real world out there beyond the lights. City living is almost entirely artificial these days.

Maybe you'd better absorb some of the actuality out there and bring it back to the domain of the low riders and the little tin boom-box drivers. We need people with their feet on the real ground. Next time you're out in country that only people in competent 4x4s get to see you should look for experiences that can bring you closer to an awareness of the world that matters. Take your eyes off those ugly ruts you're following, park the damned thing and shut it off. Walk away – maybe a long way away – a mile, say. Sit down and become one, as the Buddhists have it, with the world out there. As far from the unreality of city living as you can get. This is what your ancestors experienced thousands of years ago. This is the world in which your humanity evolved.

Experience it. Remember it. Fix it into the way you live your life. You'll never become another one of ‘them', satisfied with nothing more than virtual reality on a glitzy toy. Be out front, as someone for others to follow.

Automobile Politics

2006-04-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

I believe the automobile is the worst thing that ever happened to the planet, and by extension, to the human race. Not just its disproportionate contribution to greenhouse gases, but its effect upon our culture and our attitudes.

Can anyone out there claim to have never regarded another motorist as an enemy? The timid driver holding a lengthening snake of the impatient behind them, or the transport truck driver careering along a winter road with his own fogbank of blinding snow in his wake? Even in the most insular of societies, a lengthy journey in public transport eventually leads one to recognize our common humanity, if only in a timid, grudging way. A lengthy journey by automobile leads one to detest other drivers.

The fragmentation of human society into suburbs, satellite towns, and acreages grew from our dependency on the automobile, and is the very antithesis of the meaning of the word civilization. Cities originally grew where people found the means to prosper in the common good. Today, half of our electorates decry the common good as the opposite of economic efficiency. What an illusion. The common good is the institution which provides the hospital you were born in, the school where you were educated, and the company where you earn your living. Don't be deceived by the lie that self made men are those who prosper by their own efforts – if there were no society bound together by the give and take of the common good – those individuals would be as impoverished as any other peasant under feudalism.

Corporate managers and their think-tank minions, who decry government for its waste and inefficiency – and claim it's holding them back – have gained more from the common good than you or I. They benefit more from good order, effective government, and the whole edifice of laws than you or I. Who is it has recourse to the courts most? Not those of us who cannot afford the lawyers' fees. The majority of society has always looked to a champion to protect their rights – an aristocratic patron, a king, a representative, or a president. Good government is the champion of the common people, not just the rich and powerful. If it's not serving you now it's because it has been subverted to other, insider interests. Business gets the tax breaks and the royalty holidays.

So how did I get here from decrying the automobile? No matter how much we may mistrust and oppose it, some kind of carbon tax may become inevitable. The automobile manufacturers and the oil companies vehemently oppose it – supported by all the little people who hang onto their coat-tails. The result will be that the eventual legislation will come in with the stamp of those antagonisms, and lose sophistication and clever policies for a sledge hammer of authority. And who will suffer most? The common people, of course.

You with a home in the suburbs or the country will inevitably bear a larger share of the burden than the apartment dweller in the city. You will be the one paying an outrageous price for gasoline while others take public transit. But it doesn't have to be that way. It would be fairer for the shift in taxation, and the subsidies our governments pay to vested interests, to start small and create the shifts in spending and investment patterns over the long, rather than the short term. Instead of the high cost of commuting become a burden upon your investment in country property in one fell swoop, it would unfold gradually; hopefully giving you and your heirs ample time to adjust their expectations and their savings accordingly.

That will only happen if we – the people who depend upon the common good – cease supporting the policies that benefit those other people. Let's shed a crocodile tear for the poor shareholders of Exxon and Shell, but don't be fool enough to vote their politicians into office where they can shift more burden onto you. We've been suckers long enough. Polish the damned things that you depend upon for travel and pay those dollars to keep them in safe order – but don't worship them. If you can find someone's deep frier that will keep you in bio-diesel, more power to you, but the best solution is likely the fuel cell. That technology improves almost daily. Don't let it be manipulated out of existence the way other examples of the common good have been. If its greatest advantage is in public transport, applaud it. Lobby to have public transit come your way, for your benefit as well. One day the fuel that powers society may be growing in the field beside you. It will smell like a new future.

Off Road Experience

2006-04-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

Traveling off-road is a popular pastime, but what are the best techniques and tips?

With 46 years of off-road traveling, I can offer more insight than most. I started off-roading with a jeep-type machine in 1959 – courtesy of the Royal Artillery. I worked as a surveyor in the North African deserts for almost five years, and traveled on every kind of surface there from sand dunes to salt marshes. I surveyed in Canada for another 30+ years and conducted my work from tracked vehicles in the Arctic Islands; pickup trucks in the Northern forests, muskeg, mountains, and Prairies; ran ATVs both summer and winter; hitched rides both on and behind Cats; and when the going got really tough, hopped out of helicopters to walk and scramble to where I had to go.

I've handled glare ice, sea ice, muskeg, sand dunes, desert and mountain trails, clearcuts. waterlogged fields at breakup, and forded rivers. If you want to know the best method of travel for a particular purpose, or need some tips on the best way to employ any particular mode – ask me first. It's all free – I have an ulterior motive in running this blog. I want to drive traffic to my novel writing website. I'll post a note when it's up.

In addition, I have used many kinds of navigational methods, from map and sun compass to GPS, so can answer questions about those. For example, would it be useful for you to know a quick method to use the sun as a compass? I traveled miles in the Arctic with only that to go by. GPS? I started using GPS to pinpoint locations in the Northern bush in 1991.

What about the exotic machines? Why are the big-wheeled and extremely raised trucks useless in the real world? What's the safest method to take a Cat dozer across a quaking tamarack muskeg? What's the most important tip to remember when utilizing a helicopter? I'll give you that answer to be going on with. "Don't piss-off the pilot". Your safety and your activity depends upon the person at the controls – as someone who has broken off willow branches under a running machine so it can be shut down, been instrumental in sending a cabin door into the rotor blades, and climbed out of a hovering machine onto a rock at the edge of a 2000ft precipice, I can attest that the nearest I ever came to an accident was when I took a relief pilot for granted.

Why all the Accidents?

2006-04-17T20:09:00.001-07:00

Browsing through military related blogs and hearing the Canadian news about our troops in Afghanistan, I can't help by being struck by the number of vehicle accident casualties.

Having once driven an APC during my time in the army, I well know what poor vision the driver has. Not like a driver sitting up high in a Kenworth or Mack. That must contribute to a lot of the trouble.

Even so, I also remember that while stationed with the British Army in Germany and sharing a military hospital with the Canadian Forces, who were just down the road from us at Werl and Soest, that their accident cases formed a disproportionally large part of the patient load. Since coming to live in Canada, I can see one reason for their accident rate was lack of driving skills for difficult roads. Except in the winter,Canadian roads are too easy. That in itself means the Canadian drivers didn't have the same driving experience as the Europeans who learned on reverse camber curves, cobblestones, and the like.

This is compounded by the lower basic skills factor today – say a lower median driver ability. The corporate push to profits over the years has induced all manufacturers to make handling their vehicles easier. Automatic transmissions, cruise control, ABS brakes, and more. One might suppose this is a fine idea, but it means the general level of driver skills is lower because more marginally competent drivers are on the road. Sure those drivers are fine for most driving tasks, but when things go wrong they don't have the skills, or the feel for automobile handling, to get themeslves out of trouble. Younger U.S. and Canadian drivers don't have a high level of skill unless they have handled difficult vehicles and/or difficult roads.

In the military flying business, it used to be a given that the training aircraft presented a challenge to the trainee pilots. The idea was to weed out the less skilled at an early stage of the expensive training. I'm sure if we tried to lower our national accident rates by weeding out the incompetent drivers, there'd be a hell of an outcry, but that is the only way to reduce the carnage.

Easier roads and easier vehicles make for less competent drivers.

It's not likely that the rules will be changed to make all learners pass their driving test in a vehicle with a standard transmission, but you can advance your own skill level by mastering one. Try something like the old 1931 MG that was my first vehicle – it had what we called a ‘crash box' – a non-synchronised transmission. The army had a 1 ton truck with a similar transmission and when I had one on charge I learned to drive it without using the clutch at all – all my shifts had to be spot-on. The old autos had no automatic devices, but you're not likely to get near one today. English motorcycles of the 60s had no automatic spark or choke controls – riders had to learn to adjust these with levers on the handlebars. Perhaps some purists still sell them that way.

What I'm suggesting is not that I think all you young drivers are hopeless, but that you recognise the difference between the easy driving behind an automatic on a four-lane freeway and handling some beast of a machine on a mountain track in Afghanistan or Kosovo. When you get you first license, look on it as your basic training and find some advanced training to supplement it with. Some hog of a stick-shift 4x4 on a back country trail might do as a start. The experience could save your life one day.