Plastics Follow-up

In a recent post I made, I responded to a friend who asked for my thoughts on the City of Victoria banning plastic bags. To summarise, my response was that such bans do nothing but virtue signal and that the real problem are "environmentalists" who typically promote nonsensical solutions while at the same time denigrate real solutions at the expense of the environment they supposedly want to "save".

Here we are a week after I posted that commentary and I came across a reference to a very interesting paper titled "Save The Oceans, Stop Recycling Plastic" written by Mikko Paunio, a professor of  epidemiology at the University of Helsinki, and researcher in Finland. Here in it's entirely is the Executive Summary from the report (where bolded the emphasis is mine):

A marine plastic litter crisis has been declared and the mass media around the world has given their front pages over to the story for a while now. The European Union – among other actors – has declared a war against marine litter. Annually over 10 million metric tons (Mt) of plastic litter end up in oceans, harming wildlife. The International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) – the most competent specialist organization in the field – has summarized the origins of the marine litter crisis:

75% of land based marine litter in low to upper-middle income economies comes from litter and uncollected waste, while the remaining 25% of the land-based sources is plastic which leaks from within the waste management system.

In other words, the ISWA report shows that 25% of the leakage is attributable to the waste management option preferred by green ideologues; meanwhile, waste incineration can prevent any leakage of plastic if municipal solid waste (MSW) is incinerated along with sewage sludge. Despite this, incineration is vehemently opposed by green ideologues and also by the EU, which chooses to believe in the mirage of a circular economy.

The vast majority of the marine litter problem is attributable to poor waste collection and other sanitary practices in Asian, and to a lesser extent African, towns and cities in coastal areas and along rivers. The problem is particularly acute in China. The neglect of urban sanitary policy – the backbone of development agendas until that time – started when the ‘mother of sustainability’, Norway’s Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, personally refused to have it be part of her World Commission’s work program and ultimately its 1987 report, which famously led to the adoption of ‘sustainable development’ goals by the UN General Assembly.

This report describes the absurdities, inefficiencies, double or even triple waste management structures and horrible consequences of the EU’s erratic green waste policy (such as the terrible waste catastrophe in Naples in 2008), its fact-free claim that its waste policy helps to implement the Paris climate agreement, and its dumping of 3 Mt of plastic in China each year, with horrific consequences for the marine environment and health.

The EU has now started to sideline – in the name of circular economy – the highly successful waste incineration policy implemented in seven EU member states – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden – which all have major waste incineration capacity and now landfill less than 3% of their MSW.

So, as you can see while I may not have specific expertise in a field I do have a well rounded scientific background that I frequently can "see the Forest for the trees" very early on when an "issue" is in its early years. And while it does look like I am boasting, once I have gathered enough evidence to be sure, once I have taken a position I have yet to be proven wrong. As evidence of this claim you need go no further than review my earliest posts on this site and then compare with more recent ones.

So if you have thought my rumblings in my "Plastics!" post are those of a lunatic I encourage you to read the paper cited above and then I suggest you re-read my previous "Plastics!" post. Let me know if you see a hole in either my logic or that of Professor Paunio's.

If there is a lesson to be learned it is that when an environmental issue is identified we have to stop listening to the "solutions" being proposed by cultural leeches such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club as just two examples. While they may have identified something of significant concern they couldn't care less about finding a real solution as then they would no longer be able to raise money through their incessant fear-mongering.

Left vs. Right and Polarisation

Over the last several years I have been following what happens in the US quite a bit, but not to divert my attentions from what goes on in my home country but to gain an outsiders perspective by looking for parallels, and there are a lot! And I try to find answers to local questions. Ever since Trump got elected the Democrats having been fighting him tooth and nail trying to void his election. The bureaucracy that is Washington (the "swamp") is trying its best to assist the Democrats in doing that. The irony here is that they are exercising their "democratic rights". The tool they wish to use is "impeachment" for "Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanours". This same tool has been tried during my life time also against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton and was successful against Clinton. In the history of the US there are only two Presidents that have been found guilty by Congress of the charge: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. And in both cases they were acquitted.

Why do I bring this up? Because the media have a grand old time, as does the party promoting it, the Democrats. Yet other than making the President that is targeted less effective it does nothing and proves nothing! On top of it neither party are populated with saints. For example the Democrats accused Trump of "colluding" with Russia with no supporting evidence having been found after almost a year and a half of investigation yet there is ample evidence that Hillary Clinton had "colluded" with the Russians when she was Secretary of State. So it is okay if one of your own does something that is not considered moral or ethical but if that charge can be applied against your political opponent then it has value? I don't get it.

Personally I find a lot of the charges that were levelled against Nixon, Clinton and Trump frivolous and far from being "high crimes". Clinton's infidelities while in office should have resulted in him being thrown out of office since anyone else who had been accused by so many and with so much supporting evidence, would have been definitely jailed! The real problem is that this is a classic example of a feud whereby the reason for continuing this nonsense is "well, he did it too" and "an eye for an eye". Revenge is petty at best. As I have stated before I abhor hypocrisy and in all 3 cases democracy has been bludgeoned badly by blatant hypocrisy. Elections are held with which to choose who will lead the electorate for a finite term and at the end of that term the electorate then have the opportunity to replace them with someone else. Yet too often now, and typically it is the left of centre, one group cannot accept the results nor wait until the next election and thus fight tooth and nail to get their way right now, to hell with everyone else.

Are we in Canada better off, the same, or worse? One obvious difference is there is no legislation that specifically covers the Prime Minister. But they are subject, or at least we are lead to believe, to the same laws and penalties as the rest of us. Other than that there certainly are similarities in that one party is more prone to inciting treason (disloyalty or treachery to one's country); in the US it is the Democrats and in recent years in Canada it is the Liberals and specifically our current Prime Minister.

The crux of the problem is the current state of Main Stream Media (MSM), primarily television and print media. They show a very strong left wing bias such that we do not get very little honest reporting. And that is a serious problem for us in Canada and for all other democracies; the MSM are supposed to be our cultural conscience and they are failing miserably!  How often in the past have we seen someone trying to deal with a moral or ethical issue and on one shoulder is a small devil and on the other a small angel? In order to make the best decision one needs to explore both sides of any issue and the MSM are supposed to be those two views and why a "free press" is crucial for we the people to make a well informed decision.

To illustrate what I mean remember the ruckus over Senator Mike Duffy. What he did with his expense account and what the Prime Ministers chief of staff, Nigel Wright, did to pay the disputed amount back resulted in a uproar across the country, aided and abetted hugely by the MSM, that continued, and had a major impact on the last Federal election here. Yet Trudeau does even worse and is convicted on 4 separate counts of conflict of interest and no charges from the RCMP, hardly a word from the opposition parties and barely a peep said by the same media! Another example over the previous decade was that the Conservatives "had a hidden agenda". I'm sorry but I do not recall a Carbon Tax being part of the Liberal platform during that same election. Yet soon after taking power Trudeau announced that a Carbon Tax was going to be implemented. Where was the media outrage over the fact it was a hidden agenda item? Has there even been a discussion on the pro's and con's? I have seen a few in favour by members of the MSM but not against as that would go against their bias.

But I am digressing from my main thesis; polarisation. The reason, as I see it, that we see so much polarisation both here and south of the border is due to a lack of dialogue between opposing voices. Rather than debating we see the left and the complicit MSM  shouting ill founded accusations with no solid evidence in support. Or taking a very important moral and ethical issue and twisting it and turning it against whoever they do not like. The worst tool used, and I am becoming far more aware of its prevalence, is "projection"; "the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects; especially : the externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety".

Far too often the liberal dominated media project the traits of the left onto the right. As I have previously written it is what is said of "ANTIFA", a group Fascist thugs, and accusing their victims of being the "Fascists".  The MSM have failed us and are blind to their failing; while readership drops they pander more and more to the left. They are oblivious to the fact that they keep alienating a significant proportion of their potential audience yet cannot see that the demographic they are reaching out to is over represented by their own competitors. Why would a Toronto Star subscriber also subscribe to the National Post which pretty much mimics what is published by the former? Our conscience has abandoned us. Will I live long enough to see it revive itself? I just don't know but I sure hope it does happen and the sooner the better!  

Plastic!

A very good friend of mine wrote me recently and posed the following:

"Regarding your blog - Victoria recently decided to ban the use of plastic bags.   I believe PEI recently did this as well. In my view, this is long overdue, given the very negative environmental impact of plastics. A friend of mine recently returned from Hawaii on a cruise ship - he said they passed through the edge of the great pacific plastic vortex - and that it was mind-boggling and frightening, not to mention ugly. I wonder if this might be a potential subject for your investigative and blogging skills.   I think plastic bottles are also a complete aberration with an immense environmental impact."

I agree with him 100% that this is a topic worth discussing! Unfortunately I have a much more jaded view. For example my wife once made "poofs" - a hollow fabric valance that went above the drapes in our living room. They are kept in shape by stuffing with something such as plastic bags. And that is what we stuffed ours with.  Several years later she wanted a change so we took them down. In removing the plastic bags they pretty much disintegrated into dust. Even though "protected" by the fabric enough radiation from sunlight and heat got to them and they decomposed.  The phenomenon experienced is "photo-degradation". It was then that I realized one of the worst things we can do with plastic in general is bury it in landfill where these natural forces cannot operate.

The Pacific Vortex is also known as the "Pacific Gyre". The National Geographic has posted a description of this natural phenomenon that is the product of circulating water and wind currents and even though also called the plastic vortex" includes all sorts of refuse that floats. Ironically this vortex is not the floating "garbage patch" it is described as. Even the pictures that typically are used to illustrate, especially last year, are not of the gyre but are masses of debris typically downwind of  areas devastated by recent hurricanes (watch for mountains in the back ground!).

So it is not the plastic bags per se, or plastic in general that should be the issue.  It is how we treat our waste. Banning something does nothing positive but give virtue signals. To illustrate, around where I now live you no longer can burn refuse, including plastic, even though it is made of "organic" natural materials - they are carbon based compounds. And many of our small dumps are being closed and rules added to what and how much can go to land fill. What has been the response? Because they no longer have a simple way of handling this waste and with no viable alternatives given they instead sneak out to seldom used rural areas and dump their unwanted waste. In countries that border oceans it is far too easy to just dump refuse overboard because of such "noble" rules such as banning plastic bags. Now think about this. Due to these "environmental" rules are we better off? Is the environment better off?

The real problem is not plastics and the imposition of new laws banning various plastic items, including bags and even straws. The problem is with our "environmentalists" in that they are great at identifying a problem but fail to provide rational solutions. And there are solutions! For example I came across a news item about how in India they use granulated plastic as aggregate for asphalt and thus pave roads with this material.

I for one have bought into the 3 R's - Recycle, Reuse or Repurpose. Why? Because it makes economic as well as environmental sense! It is not perfect as currently implemented, again as we are seeing in the news China is now refusing to take our plastic waste so it can be recycled. So what we have created by our efforts to "recycle" is to offload our problem to others! Another example was that Toronto used to do by shipping their garbage to Michigan! Why do this when there are technologies that could easily be implemented, such as high temperature incinerators with associated processing of the off gases? Because "environmentalists" refuse to support those technologies as they "pollute". Every time there is a viable means of controlling our solid waste issues, including plastics, "environmentalists" jump on the same tiresome band wagon and say "we can't do that!" and the politicians are cowed and fall back on the typical "solution" that does nothing to solve the problem - ban it or ship it somewhere else to be dealt with!

If "environmentalists" want to be taken seriously they need to start coming up with and strongly supporting viable solutions and stop putting up road blocks to solutions being proposed by others. Life is a compromise as there is no perfect solution. Face that fact head on and in doing so actually start making a difference!

"Plastics" are not the problem. It is the standard  response of "banning" things and the standard "not in my back yard" mentality to viable solutions that results in encouraging bad behaviour and in doing so make a bad situation worse.

We started by mentioning Victoria. Remember, this is one of the very few cities in Canada that still dumps untreated sewage directly into the Pacific Ocean. And they think they can make a difference by banning plastic bags? Typical of a place with a high proportion of "environmentalists" - to "solve" a "problem" ban plastic bags yet dump untreated crap into the ocean. Great way to set the moral bar as high as possible - not!

Thoughts on Gun control

I have a moral and ethical issue with most proposals for "gun control". The primary reason is the hypocrisy that dominates any "debate" on this issue. Those who promote stronger gun control legislation do so as they believe every person killed by a gun is a tragic loss and we need to stop  this senseless loss of life any way possible. At first blush it seems like the right thing to do but then we need to consider that people lose their lives for a variety of reasons. Were the lives of those killed by any other method less valuable to society? For example people also die from automobile accidents. In 2004, the year I was able to get reliable statistics there were 743 people killed through the use of firearms and 2,875 from motor vehicle accidents. So a person is almost 4 times more likely to die from a motor vehicle accident but you don't hear of more motor vehicle control, just gun control. Is a life lost from the use a gun more valuable than one lost through the use of an automobile? This is the moral and ethical issue that is never addressed; is an untimely death from one method more of a loss that one by another? Of course not.

So why is it then that if a gun is involved it makes the lead news story? Is it because we do not have tight enough legislation? Being a former gun owner I can attest to the fact that is not the case, especially in Canada. Having and using a firearm has a lot of responsibility attached to it as does operating an automobile. In Canada you have to take and pass a gun safety course before you can even apply for a Possession Acquisition License (PAL) and that document is only issued after a careful background check, plus you need to be at least 18 years of age. I do not recall ever hearing of anyone having to get a background check before they could either operate or acquire an automobile plus you only have to be 16.

But you say that is like comparing apples and oranges, they are not the same! Or are they different? Both are manufactured tools. Sure, one is designed to kill and the other not but because of its mass and momentum can and does kill. The one common feature is that both are operated by human beings. As is said so often when it makes the news it is not guns that kill, it is people. Take for example the recent mass shooting at that school in Florida. A person was repeatedly reported to the authorities as being mentally disturbed. Did those authorities do anything? No, they did not. So what was the real reason that it happened? Was it because of the type of firearm he had? Maybe, as another type may have been less lethal, or maybe more would have been killed. The key fact though is that the authorities were made aware that this person was a danger yet did nothing. People lost their lives because of their inaction and not because the current legislation wasn't tight enough.

We have available to us many different means at our disposal for doing harm to others. Banning certain types just encourages the determined person to find another way. What is the most dangerous weapon? We are. We are our own worst enemy as many examples illustrate such as 9/11. At that time 2,996 people were killed and the perpetrators used box cutters to commandeer airplanes. Was there an outcry to ban box cutters? How about plane's?  Of course not because that is silly because it wasn't the cutters or the planes that were at fault, it was the terrorists who controlled both.

But the real issue here is that no attempt is being made to consider whether or not tighter gun control will have the desired effect. Thomas Sowell delved into that subject with his essay "The Gun Control Farce". For example he cites a study done by Professor Joyce Malcolm titled "Guns and Violence: The English Experience". She noted that during the latter stages of the 20th century in England gun control laws became ever more severe yet armed robberies in London soared to 1,400 in 1974 when there had only been 12 in 1954! She noted that "as the numbers of legal firearms have dwindled, the numbers of armed crimes have risen".

I strongly suspect that one reason gun control is an issue at all is because of political smoke and mirrors. The politicians use it as a misdirection technique to avoid the populace concerning ourselves with the real issues, such as health, and jobs. And they are aided and abetted by the main stream media who look for anything sensational that can be leveraged to sell their product regardless of the moral, ethical and logical aspects.

Update: The very next day after uploading this post I came across this interesting video. Please note the parallels. 

Portable Energy

The expansion of civilization has been a function of access to portable energy. With the ability to capture the power of wind through development of sails civilisation expanded, but primarily over water where this "free" energy could be taken advantage of. On land for centuries the form of portable energy that was commonly used was wood. The problem with wood is that it does not have a very high energy density ( 2.5 - 4.4 kWh/Kg) so it takes a lot of wood to get a reasonable amount of energy. Another problem was the cost of transforming that wood into a form that made it relatively easy to move around with you at reasonable cost.

Fuel	Thermal Energy
	(Calorific Content)
	kWh/Kg
Green Wood	2.5
Brown Coal (Lignite)	2.8
Dry Wood	4.4
Methanol	6.4
Coking (Black) Coal	8.3
Ethanol	8.3
Natural Gas (North Sea)	10.8
Bio diesel	10.9
Oil	12.5
Diesel	12.9
Kerosene (Paraffin Oil)	13
Petrol (Gasoline)	13
Butane	13.7
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is a mixture of Propane and Butane	13.8
Propane	13.9
Uranium 235 (Nuclear Fission)	22,500,000
Deuterium - Tritium (40 / 60) (Nuclear Fusion)	93,600,000
adapted from http://www.mpoweruk.com/energy_resources.htm

In some locations a black rock called coal was found that, like wood, would burn thus releasing its contained energy. Unlike wood it contains a higher energy density (8.3 kWh/Kg)  and when crushed is easier to transport. Over time methods were found to mine coal thus making its availability much easier and through the economies of scale the cost per unit was brought down so that it was dramatically less than wood. With its wholesale introduction thus began the industrial revolution! But when it came to transportation, primarily through the introduction of the stream engine, the volume required of coal and the resultant useful energy captured did not allow much independence; it still was bulky and that could only be alleviated by setting up large caches ahead of time.

Like coal another form of energy had been known for a long time is petroleum. When the supply greatly expanded due to the discovery of a proliferation of oil fields civilisation was able to take advantage of its higher energy density than coal. Plus it had the additional advantage that it is easier to transport as no longer were we subjected to the swell factors associated with solids that need to be broken apart to make them easier to transport (typically 75-85% for coal). So not only was oil easier to acquire because being a liquid it could be pumped it also can be transported in a denser form even though the energy density is not that much higher (about 12. 5 depending on the liquid, compared to 8.3 for coal). It is this compactness, along with low cost, that once again revolutionized the economy leading to our current state. Inexpensive yet portable energy has had a dramatic positive impact on civilisation!

Where will we go from here? As you can see from the energy density table if we can master containing fission or fusion into much smaller packages who knows.

To back track, this transformation all began with a form of "free" energy - wind. Not only is it "free" for the taking, it is available just about anywhere on the earth's surface. So no need to expend money to acquire it other than the mechanics of using the kinetic energy of wind. Nor is there a need to find a way to contain it. The big problem is that wind does not always blow when you need it. Another form of "free" energy that we have access to is solar. Like wind it is a form of "kinetic" energy in that it is result of the  movement of photons. Like wind solar suffers in that this energy is only when the sun shines and not occluded by cloud cover and so is not always available when you need it.

While we cannot directly store wind and solar energy we can convert them into electrical energy which can then be stored in batteries, or used to convert that energy back into another form of kinetic energy that can be stored, such as water. The problem with batteries is how can we make them "portable" such that we can take enough energy with us to give similar levels of independence at an affordable cost that we get with petroleum? To have the capacity we need, using current technology, we have excessive weight and volume to the point the gain diminishes rapidly as too much energy is required just to move the mass of the batteries. Another change needs to be a form of standardisation in battery packs so they can be quickly swapped out thus negating the issue of requiring long time periods to charge and the ability to have multiple packs so that longer distances can be traveled, similar to having jerry cans of gasoline for an internal combustion automobile.

Even with these issues I believe we are approaching a tipping point. We currently have a multitude of means of creating electricity, and that energy can be stored and made portable, including both wind and solar. When, not if, that an affordable means of storing electricity is found civilisation will undergo another positive transformation.

Note that historically all of these advances in civilisation were the result of technological and economic breakthroughs and not by government intervention. So even though there is much government "encouragement" of electric vehicles it is a classic example of putting "the cart before the horse". When industry can come up with a way to store and transport energy in a such a way that it is useful no matter where you are in the world, night and day, just like petroleum, then we can make the next leap forward.

Will that breakthrough be with batteries? Maybe, if they can standardise on the form factor so they can be easily swapped in and out and avoid long recharging wait times; and improve the weight to contained power density; and figure out a way to solve the problem of greatly reduced battery output with decreasing temperature. Lots of issues, never mind the high cost with no means on the horizon of having a dramatic decrease any time soon.

Maybe fuel cells can solve the remaining hurdles that prevent them from being cost effective? Another possibility is that maybe someone will come up with a cost effective way of converting hydrogen and carbon into synthetic petroleum. Now wouldn't that be something! Take elements that abound in nature and combine all into a form for which we already have the infrastructure and the means of using. That would be transformational! Yes, I know, we already have ethanol and biodiesel but their cost of production is still too high based on current technology and sacrifice that land for food production. Maybe the next breakthrough will be using the high energy density of nuclear to cheaply break apart water to release hydrogen, do the same with organic compounds to release carbon and then using catalysts combine the two to make synthetic gasoline?

Regardless, researchers are looking and I am very confident a breakthrough will come long before we run out of conventional petroleum. So many possibilities but driven by the market place and not by government interference. What is that quote attributed to Reagan? Oh yeah, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

Was the Novel "1984" Prescient or was it just documenting the inevitable?

Today is the first day of 2018 and an opportunity to review what happened in 2017, but not with specifics but more with generalities. A number of general concerns that have become very prominent are: "fake news", "junk science" and a general feeling that a lot of what went on kept reminding me of the book "1984" by George Orwell. I had read that book back in high school sometime around 1970, or almost 50 years ago. While I have read a lot of books over the years I find it intriguing as to why fragments of prose from only a very small selection of those books keep floating up into my consciousness and the two that do, and have done that, far too often over the years have been by the same authour; George Orwell, being "1984" and "Animal Farm".

So to end 2017 I decided it was time to reread both, beginning with "1984". George Orwell (actually his name was Eric Arthur Blair but that was the pseudonym he used) published the book in 1949 and he died the year after. He had experienced firsthand the Spanish Civil war and World War 2 plus saw the rise of communism in Russia with the eventual rise to power of Josef Stalin. When in his 30's he proclaimed that “the only regime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a socialist regime. If Fascism triumphs I am finished as a writer — that is to say, finished in my only effective capacity. That of itself would be a sufficient reason for joining a socialist party". And two years before publishing "1984" he stated “every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it". Yet neither "1984" or "Animal Farm" come across as supporting "Socialism" with the former most certainly being a condemnation of that very concept with such things as "Big Brother", The Party", "doublespeak" and "the thought police" .

So let's explore a bit the concept of "socialism" before getting more in how "1984" is a warning of what lies ahead for modern "civilization" if the current trends continue.

Churchill, in a speech to the House of Commons in 1945, proclaimed that "the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries".  And Orwell again, in 1938, proclaimed that “the thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the ‘mystique’ of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all". But there in itself Orwell made a non sequitur in that there is no such thing as a "classless society" since society will always partition into classes, the most basic of which being the leaders and the followers. Democracy is Greek for "rule of the people" and the only time society, under a democracy, can be "classless" is at the polling booth whereby every person gets to cast a ballot and that ballot has an equal weight to that cast by anyone else. Is this what Orwell meant when he said "as I understand it"? The only part of democracy that is true socialism is when one votes, or in other words "democratic socialism"? Now that I have read "1984" again I am convinced that is indeed what he meant.

So back to the book itself.  We are introduced to such terms as "Doublethink" (a word with two mutually contradictory meanings), "Prole" (natural inferiors, just like Clinton's "deplorables"), the "Thought Police" (not unlike our modern day Social Justice Warriors) and using names that mean the exact opposite such as the "Ministry of Love" for the war department and the "Ministry of Truth" for the department assigned the duty to alter history.

The story describes the mental anguish experienced by Winston Smith, a writer with the "Ministry of Truth" whereby every effort is made to expunge the real history of people, places and events to support the current narrative. One glaring modern day  example is what we are experiencing with "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" whereby government agencies and universities cashing in on the readily available government sourced "research" funds who conveniently alter the historical record, as exposed by "Climate Gate", or this piece in a recent American Thinker article, as two of many examples in an effort to support the fictional story they are promoting. The only difference is that currently the Internet is so vast that the actual records still exist and can be relatively easily found, for now. Even the name "Ministry of Truth" is so reminiscent of the title of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth". In reality it should have been titled "Convenient Lies". The movie went on to win two Academy Awards and is highly thought of by many. As Orwell said "the lie became truth".

A chilling paragraph from the book: "The date had stuck in Winston's memory because it chanced to be midsummer day; but the whole story must be on record in countless other places as well. There was only one possible conclusion: the confessions were lies. Of course, this was not in itself a discovery. Even at that time Winston had not imagined that the people who were wiped out in the purges had actually committed the crimes that they were accused of. But this was concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past, like a fossil bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory. It was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been published to the world and its significance made known."

The political "swamp", if left unchecked,  is the precursor of the "Ministry of Truth" with most Main Stream Media complicit with the deceit. The Democrats in the US tried to lay the blame on loosing the Presidential election on collusion of Trump and his supporters with the Russians.  As it turns out all of the collusion was by the Democrats but that for the most part is being swept under the rug since that should have been enough to "blow the Party to atoms" but isn't because the Main Stream Media try their best to refute it even exists. Thus the predominance of "Fake News", a name which they in turn apply to real news in an effort to deceive. Without careful scrutiny and the application of a lot of skepticism one can be easily misled. And here in Canada we have a Prime Minister found guilty of not one, not two, not three, but FOUR violations of Conflict of Interest legislation and is that "published to the world and its significance made known"? Already it has almost been expunged from the public record or at the very least downplayed. But we had a senator affiliated with the previous government who was accused of 31 different charges including "breach of trust" and was found innocent of all charges. The media could not "publish" this case enough!

Speaking of Trudeau here are some of his quotes.

• Openness, respect, integrity - these are principles that need to underpin pretty much every other decision that you make.

Numerous times in just two years he has shown to have a disregard for all three. And his conviction of breaking the  Conflict of Interest law is just the latest example that has surfaced.

• I have no regrets

He has no respect for anyone or any legislation he is expected to follow. One with such low ethical and moral standards of course would have no regrets.

• Sunny ways my friends, sunny ways.

This quote supposedly is a nod to Sir Wilfred Lauier who said, during one parliamentary debate "Well, sir, the government are very windy. They have blown and raged and theatened, but the more they have theatened and raged and blown the more that man Greenway has stuck to his coat. If it were in my power, I would try the sunny way. I would approach this man Greenway with the sunny way of patriotism, asking him to be just and to be fair, asking him to be generous to the minority, in order that we may have peace among all the creeds and races which it has pleased God to bring upon this corner of our common country. Do you not believe that there is more to be gained by appealing to the heart and soul of men rather than to compel them to do a thing?" Now think, has Trudeau delivered by focusing on patriotism, on being just and fair?

• Because it’s 2015

Sorry Justin, but you misspoke as I'm sure you meant  'It's going to be like "1984"'.

Orwell may have got the date wrong but we are definitely on our way down that dark path. Human nature is such that many preach and praise Socialism as being the perfect political system. But it is not as it is based on a false narrative that ignores human nature. As Sir Winston Churchill said in 1947; "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the rest".

The current poster boy of Socialism in Canada is Trudeau and the only thing we have to be thankful for is that he is so ignorant of his weaknesses that he ends up being so obvious the tyrant he wants to be. One of many examples include enacting M-103, the thin edge of the wedge  to stifle free speech. We must remember that "Freedom of Speech" isn't having the freedom to say anything, it is the freedom to listen to anything and then being able to judge for one self and exercising our innate freedom to think for ourselves.

I would like to close with two more quotes from "1984" that you can ponder on and then determine if you see relevance to what is currently going on around us:

"The official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism."

"One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship."