Oil Wells to be Tapped in Arctic?

Greenland.

Ask the average joe about the arctic nation and you will likely get a shrug or a squinting of the eye denoting your subject knows little about it.

In the odd case, you might get some Menza-type guy or gal who tells you frozen vast wasteland in the North Atlantic, that has very little impact on the world as a whole.

And they would be right. That is until now.

Greenland has recently approved bids for drilling for oil near Baffin Bay at the mouth of Lancaster Sound.

And while I'n not positive to where that is, I do know that it is treacherously close to an area near Greenland's border with Canada where that nation hopes to set up a maritime conservation area.

The idea of putting up deep ocean oil wells in the area is precarious at best. The area that the wells would be put in is known as Iceberg Alley - so I'm told because of the massive chunks of ice that break off of Greenland and float down to the North Atlantic.

It's likely that it was one of these doozies took down the Titanic. Imagine what it could do to an oil well that doesn't move.

Some environmentalists are worried that if their is an oil spill in the region, which seems to be an inevitability, the oil would be caught under ice which could have a detrimental ecological impact for weeks, months, even years to come.

And that's the scary part.

No one is exactly sure how an oil spill would affect the area.

For Canada's part, they say they'll ensure Greenland follows proper safety procedures. Great. A country who can't even keep it's own property from being drilled within 72 hours of the Gulf of Mexico disaster makes me feel terrific about the chances of an oil spill happening in the region.

A colleague of mine said, "You know this oil spill is probably the best thing to happen to Offshore drilling - there's no way Canada will allow that to happen anymore."

You couldn't have been more wrong.

DG

Time Square Bomber a Real Threat?

We now know that Faisal Shahzad is the suspect in the New York Times Square bomb attempt.

We also now know that he was caught on a plane mere seconds away from take off at JFK airport for a possible safe haven in Dubai.

What is left is rumour and innuendo that major newspapers, TV stations and yes, even bloggers haven't been able to sort out.

The Times of India is linking him in Pakistani-Taliban circles, saying he may be a part of terrorist organizations such as Tehreek-e-Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed. The paper also infers that perhaps the US is covering up some details about his background, because, as they put it, "US-Pakistani relations would sour dramatically if Shahzad is found to have trained in bomb training in Pakistan.."

These reports are contrary to what we are hearing in the mainstream, which talks about the poor bomb-making abilities of Shahzad, calling it amateur, and "not in line with the bomb-making abilities" of terrorists in that region.

Any links to the Taliban cannot be confirmed, and it appears that the US, while not sweeping the issue under the carpet, is attempting to make Shahzad look like a modern day Gomer Pile. An American citizen who never had issues with the US until lately, when he stopped paying his mortgage.

Not paying his mortgage? What could be MORE American?

TOI also points to the fact that Shahzad's uncle was a Major-General in Pakistan - certainly that is proof that he wanted harm to be done to those in Times Square.

The newspaper suggests that having a high ranking uncle would have allowed Shahzad to undergo terrorist training without much trouble. Not that anything in what I'm hearing that would suggest he's had any training at all.

Shahzad is facing terrorism and weapons charges in the US, but what amounts to a handful of cherry bombs he bought from a corner store wouldn't have done any damage whatsoever.

And if you are to believe what the mainstream media is feeding us, this Gomer Pile was also 'bright' enough to have tried to this a couple days earlier, but forgot the keys for the pathfinder 'bomb' car and the getaway car.

The Pakistanis meanwhile, portray Shahzad as a naturalized American - and not a Pakistani at all.

Although when hard pressed, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi says it could be the Taliban retaliating for American drone attacks.

So - is it naturalized American turned terrorist, or bumbling Connecticut man loses his marbles?

What's your call?