Sunday, September 18th, Wilco arrived at Metropolis with the redoubtable Nick Lowe to promote The Whole Love, Wilco's newest album. Wilco, an alternative band with country and rock influences and a line-up that has changed frequently over the years, have among their many accomplishments a couple of Grammys to their credit from back in 2005 for the album "A Ghost is Born," including Best Alternative Album. Most notably they...
In a memorable rant Rick Mercer lays out a host of reasons those between the ages of 18 and 25 should get out and vote in the coming May 2 election. For starters there's 3 million such voters which is more than enough to have a massive effect on the results. For seconds the powers that be are happy that the youth aren't voting. That way they don't have to listen or even care about their concerns or as Rick Mercer puts it, "That's why your tuition keeps going up!" The best reason to take 20 minutes out of your day and vote is because you'll scare the crap out of the people that run this country and then just maybe they'll do more than pay you lip service. You know how to whistle don't you?
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I'm not sure when it started or when I first noticed it but CNN now has an Extreme Weather Desk as a regular feature in the course of their daily 24/7 news broadcasts. In my day... and I'm not kidding even though I'm only 54, in my day we didn't need an extreme weather desk! Of course occasionally the weather got crazy somewhere around the globe but that was exceptional and it was reported on then as it is today, breathlessly and with a sense of awe but you know, just not every damned day of the week!
When looking at the budget fights the Americans are currently embroiled in, it's important to ignore the spin from both sides and remember what it is they actually spend their money on. If ever there was a case to be made that the Military Industrial Complex has taken over and has far too much influence on American policy both foreign and domestic, it's contained in the numbers below which were put together by the non-partisan National Priorities Project. As you can see, when it comes to Discretionary Spending there's 5% for health, 4% for education, 6% for environment, energy and science and other piddling percentages for things that should be considered important but as you can see the bulk of it is on military...
The much awaited dump of some 390,000 documents relating to the Iraq war has finally taken place and not surprisingly a grim picture emerges from this war of choice that the US and their "coalition of the willing" took part in.
Last week a report released by the Pentagon made the specious claim that "only"...
The title sounds a bit grandiose and the Globe and Mail even suggests that the task facing the 193 national delegations descending on Nagoya, Japan, ...is one befitting a deity: how to preserve life on Earth. The...
Hey there and thanks for dropping by. Wanted to make sure I got the news links for today's show posted before midnight.
Canada gets one half-right as BPA Bisphenol A is declared toxic but not banned from use. This in spite of studies that show ...the plastic causes “adverse effects on animals” exposed at low doses, including biochemical changes in the central nervous system, effects on the immune system and enhanced susceptibility to breast cancer.
A new study projects the impact continued global warming will have on Canada in the future -- called the Climate Prosperity...
Click here to listen to the interview.
WHAT: Stand Up For Mental Health Day at Concordia University Thursday Oct. 7
DETAILS: ARE YOU CRAZY ABOUT COMEDY?
Fresh from Sold Out Shows at the Montreal Fringe Festival and the Vancouver Comedy Fest ….
Stand Up For Mental Health Brings the Laughter to Concordia University Thursday Oct.7. Featuring the Fabulous David Granirer and the Comics of SMH Montreal!
Don’t Miss SMH Day at Concordia at...
You may need: Adobe Flash Player.
Here in Canada we have the tarsands with their attendant tailings ponds which are a massive ecological disaster, an inefficient way to get oil from the ground, and late last night it was reported that deformed fish are being found in Lake Athabasca downstream from the tarsands in northern...
The Arctic is the one place no argues about or disputes the rapidly changing climate. The ice pack has shrunk so much ...that two ships are now attempting a polar circumnavigation of the globe by sailing along both the Canadian and Russian Arctic coastlines.
The current gold rush that's taking place for the...
The Tories are facing a defeat on one of their most cherished issues, and they have been put on the defensive about a CBC report that alleges their campaign on this issue has ties to the NRA. The CBC has published documents to back up their claim that the NRA has been actively involved in trying to abolish the long gun registry for years now. To top it all off, David McGuinty accused Stephen Harper and the...
"The northern polar ice cap has been showing the effects of global warming more rapidly than any other place on earth." So begins this video report that features NASA's Tom Wagner and a convincing eye-witness account of what's happening to Arctic sea ice from Arctic researcher David Barber. You can witness for yourself that there is little left to doubt as to whether or not the climate has changed and continues to do so in exactly the manner in which climate scientists long ago...
Hello there and hope you all had a brilliant summer and don't mind my sporadic posting of news stories here. For more regular post you can check out the New Media and Politics blog (it's a lot more opinionated -- these are news stories you shouldn't miss regardless of how busy school and life get).
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study has found that Canada spends more and more on higher education, an increasing percentage of the cost is borne by students and their families. In financial terms, the benefits of a postsecondary...
The RCMP report on the long-gun registry has surfaced and it is described as an important tool for law enforcement. Will the tough on crime Tories notice anything that disagrees with the narrative they've been trying to manufacture? It costs less to run than building a fake lake and is described as being cost efficient in reducing firearms...
In 2009 the New York Times called the fight over Arctic territorial claims, The biggest land grab since colonial times, and said it was accelerating as nations scramble to claim writ over hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean floor, much of it believed to be rich in natural resources.
Determining who controls the Arctic Ocean's seabed won't play out until a few years from now. Russia has decided to postpone its Arctic bid to 2013 while Denmark and Canada have until 2012 and 2013, respectively, to file claims of...
In Pakistan, fully one fifth of the country is said to be under water and the floods have not just devastated the lives of millions of people, they now present an unparalleled national security challenge for the country, the region and the international community. Lest anyone under-estimate the scale of the disaster, all four of Pakistan's wars with India combined did not cause such damage.
And there are a myriad of other problems that have been created: Millions of acres of crops have been destroyed and villages washed away. Joblessness and helplessness will lead to more young men joining the militants ...and the floods have not stopped...
Back in January of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the constitutional rights of the young man from Toronto, protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, had been violated, but the same court turned down orders from lower Canadian courts to have the Conservative government of Stephen Harper request the return of Khadr to...
There are days you can sift through your local Canadian fish-wrap and not know that there are Canadians at war on the other side of the planet. When you realize that Canada has been in Afghanistan longer than they were in the European theatre in WWII and no one can as of yet readily define what victory will look like -- you have to ask yourself why our forces remained there for such a long stay.
At the very least Canada's media could engage in more than just perfunctory coverage. I took a look through today's Montreal Gazette and found two items on Afghanistan - one a short article on Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai...
Seems like the MSM has discovered religion so far as ACC (anthropogenic climate change) is concerned. The New York Times had the link between the extreme weather we've been witnesssing globally this year and its' possible connection to climate change, on the front page on Sunday -- not below the fold, not on page A-16. Of course it took unprecedented weather around the globe to bring about this change of reporting on the likely link - floods in Pakistan that has the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan exceeding...
A rather alarming statistic comes from Statistics Canada today : more than nine out of 10 Canadians have detectable levels of bisphenol A in their urine.
From the Globe and Mail: Bisphenol A is a man-made chemical that is used in such everyday products as polycarbonate plastic water jugs, the epoxy resins lining the insides of tin cans and some types of carbonless cash-register receipts.
Elevated exposure to bisphenol A, which is also known as BPA, has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and adult-onset diabetes in humans.
Research in laboratory animals has...
Hope no one minds the change in style as far as posting goes - you can find the more personal blogging version of this at the New Media and Politics blog. Just click the time slot.
The Globe and Mail weighs in on Stockwell Day's claims of increased unreported crime.
Latest EKOS poll has the Tories and Grits in a virtual dead heat following the flap over the elimination of the long-form census. This of course will fuel speculation about the possibility of a...
I was getting ready to blog and looking around for Julian Assange's bio when I came upon a TED video talk he had just a few short days before the release of the 92,000 plus reports on the Afghanistan war. A very interesting, intelligent man with a good sense of humour -- and yet another reason to love the intertubes.
Getting ready to blog here and wanted to post something that might be thought provoking and of use in the meantime. Have a look at Annie Leonard's, The Story of Bottled Water:
The moment Julian Assange of WikiLeaks released the 92,000 plus reports that are a daily diary of the war in Afghanistan, it was inevitable that they would be compared with the Pentagon Papers. The Washington Post does a good job of sorting out the similarities and the differences noting on the one hand that, unlike the Pentagon Papers, there are no high-level documents here that raise basic questions about the credibility of Presidents Obama and George W. Bush and their top advisors. However just like the Pentagon Papers, the Wikileaks Afghanistan War Logs will (likely) fuel...
Monday's are as good to me as any other day. For my radio show it usually means I have way more stories than I'm able to get to in 2 hours which is strangely kind of of fun.
So of course the controversy over the census is still ongoing and the Conservatives continue to keep digging which is okay with me. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says ask Canadians to fill out a long census form for the good of the country and they'll rush to grab their...
Here's something funny to ponder while I get ready to post the day's links. Hope it's all going your way - and you know, you could drop me a note every once in a while.
This is a longer version of the Carl Sagan video I posted some weeks ago. It's thoughtful and insightful and a good example of what his series, Cosmos, was like. The person who put this together threw in a few modern day reminders of where we find ourselves now - strange times indeed. His was a sane and rational voice that cut through the superstitions and nonsense to present the layman with easy to understand science about the universe and our place in it. As a kid I loved watching and reading Mr. Sagan and that hasn't changed. All these years later if he were alive he'd be aghast at the backwards steps we've taken as a species but not surprised. He speculates on that very topic at the close of the video with the words in the heading, "If we capitulate to superstition or greed or...
It seems to me the Canada's Conservative Party has done all it can to stay in the news in what should be the off-season, politically speaking. Parliament took its summer break four short weeks It has not done them credit. The $1 billion spent on security for the G8 and G20 summits which were essentially pro-forma - meaning the deals had been struck in advance so the entire show was about photo-ops mostly. Canadians are going to remember that...
The title is misleading of course. There is one continuous narrative in the MSM: Everything that happens is good for the Republicans and bad for the Democrats. You can take that MSM wisdom further and say everything that does happen is the responsibility of the Democrats and not the Republicans. Sadly a lot of Democrats or progressives are happy to play along. I'd say they do that to show off their independence creds, but that would be cynical on my part too. There are some genuine reasons for criticism and I'll talk about that, but it'd be nice if after a long week if some of the good could get as much attention.
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As the calls grow for Statistics Canada to be made into an arms-length agency, perhaps similar to the Office of the Auditor-General, or just independent the Tories are busily scrambling to defend their decision to...
It's Friday and I'd like to somehow both catch-up to all the stories I couldn't get to and provide a public service. Really! So here's a whole list of chemicals in everyday products you have to learn to avoid, and they're in everything from lipstick to toothpaste to pizza boxes. Go to, Not a Guinea Pig for a more complete list of things you should keep away from. To top it off, Annie Leonard, of The Story of Stuff, fame giving a primer on the toxic products we purchase and bring into our homes:
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We damned well better "stand on guard," or the Tories will just continue down this road of screwing Canadians and destroying fine institutions like Statistics Canada. Every kind of industry, labour, academic and charitable organization had sent petitions, letters and press releases saying the same thing, backed by a truckloads of statisticians and economists, said in effect that a voluntary survey would effectively gut the census. By his resignation Munir...
Starting with the dispersants BP has been using to hide the enormity of the spill in the Gulf. The real reason BP has used nearly 2 million gallons of the dispersant Corexit in the Gulf is to hide the oil and save themselves money in possible fines, says Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. He explains that the dispersant is used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that it’s invisible to the eye.
He also feels that , the government—both EPA, NOAA, etc.—have been sock puppets for BP in this cover-up. Now, by hiding the amount of spill, BP is saving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines, and so, from day one, there was tremendous economic incentive to...
This is a sad place to start: Another Canadian soldier has given his life for the mission in Afghanistan. Sapper Brian Collier, was killed by a bomb in Afghanistan Tuesday He was killed while on a foot patrol in the village of Nakhonay, in the eastern part of Panjwaii District by an improvised explosive device (IED). Collier who was just 24, was born in Toronto and raised in Bradford, Ont. He was a member of the 1 Combat Engineer Regiment based at CFB Edmonton and was serving in Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment.
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Sorry to abandon my post for the weekend but it had to be done. My sanity and well-being were at stake. I've done my best to recruit a writer or two but to no avail. It's hard to blame anyone either - "Would you like to chronicle bad new for very little money and hardly any recognition?"
That might change in the not so distant future but for now that is an apt description of the gig. Mostly I do this in tandem with my radio show. The links here today are to the Canadian stories I talked about this morning. Isn't it endearing when I share loads of personal information?
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It has been hard to not get overly emotional about what British Petroleum has done to the Gulf of Mexico and the marine life and animals that make up those fragile eco-systems. Something that I expected to be mitigated by an outcry for sanity and clean energy policies, and stricter observance to the regulations that already exist. My hopes have sadly gone unanswered.
There was supposed to be a post yesterday on the Canadian troops handing over Kandahar city to the US Forces. You have to wonder how the Afghans feel about it though. Apparently it's all part of a major reorganization of NATO's forces in southern Afghanistan, due to the influx of thousands of fresh U.S. troops into Kandahar. After the worst month for NATO fatalities in the nine year history of the war, Lt.-Col. Craig Dalton of the Canadian Forces told a news conference in Orwellian speak that, "This rising tide of security will set the conditions for the Afghans to defeat the insurgency."
Good luck with that!
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I found this over at Pharyngula. It's an entertaining and eye-opening ten minute talk about the doctrine of positive thinking being used to quell dissent - for social control. Barbara Ehrenreich has an answer though: realism and collective power. Watch for yourself and see if you don't agree,
With the once and for all debunking of "climategate" earlier this week - there were editorials around the country telling their readers that the integrity of the science was solid in spite of all that had been alleged over the months since last November when the scientists private e-mails were hacked into - it seems that the anti-science crowd has become far more bellicose.
There are calls for violence from swift-boater Marc Marano who apparently believes climate scientists...
It's too facile to suggest that Iggy's summer publicity tour is make or break for him as a leader of the Liberal Party. It's not a stretch however to suggest that it will be his actions and the policies he chooses to fight for over the next 3 or 4 months that will decide his fate. He had many opportunities in the most recent session of Parliament to take a stand and see if the Canadian people would stand with him but he chose not to.
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This is a good segue into MSM wankery staring with: I'll bet you weren't aware how vitriolic and relentless the Democrats are. And while all the media talk has been about how those crazy Dems want to do nothing but spend money there's this from Senate Republican Jon Kyl (R-Ariz...
If BP does manage to get the spill contained there's so much that they still have to answer for - Like cutting 40,000 claimants off for having incomplete files. Oh yeah, they're going to make it right all right... for themselves. Take a look at this video with images that aren't being showed much in the MSM:
There's their use of the dispersant Corexit that's described as being four times as toxic as the oil itself:
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Have to admit when I saw the above expression used in a Globe article all I could see was the possibility of jokes - so many possibilities, so many bums! Especially in the Canadian Senate. Especially now that Stephen packed it chock full of conservative wankers... but I'm splitting hairs. A wanker's a wanker no matter how privileged or lazy or uncaring or conservative. Those seats by the way, did you know that senators are paid more than $130,000 a year to fill them? Sometimes that's just too much to ask of them though.
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Some good news from the MSM - well, in reality the evidence was in a long time ago but you take good news where you get it - the New York Times acknowledges "climategate" was not a scandal after all.
In another bit of good environmental news, water and life are returning to Iraq's 'Garden of Eden.' Saddam Hussein's draining of the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq – recorded as the Garden of Eden in the Bible - was one of the most infamous outrages of his regime, leaving a vast area of once-teeming river delta a dry, salt-encrusted desert, emptied of insects, birds and the people who lived on them.
But nearly two decades later...
In case you missed it, Naomi Klein's op-ed in the Globe and Mail about the G20 and how we all got stuck with the bill - not the $1 billion for security, that's a given - for the crisis that the bankers created and are wholly to blame for.
Amy Goodman over at Rabble.ca reporting on how the media and scientists are being shut out from examining and covering the ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf and how the lack of transparency may lead to more disasters.
Richard Fadden...
Here's some of the things you could have missed if you were busy and had a life and a summer to get to: In the US the Republicans doing everything they can to screw the economy and the unemployed strangely hoping there will be no accountability for their actions and that it will in fact win them seats in November - maybe they hope they can just bury the Dems under an avalanche of corporate money.
Amy Goodman reporting on how the media and scientists are being shut out from examining and covering the...
Hi, I'm back after a day off. Wanted to make sure all the links from Friday's show got posted. Hope your weekend is awesome!
The heat wave in the east has abated somewhat although the long-range forecast for this week includes lots more heat so no putting away those fans yet. A study by Stanford University climate scientists says that exceptionally long heat waves could become the norm in the near future. As the mercury rises outdoors, it's a fitting time to consider the effects of summertime droughts and global warming on ecosystems.
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Rachel helps put the current state of affairs in Afghanistan in some perspective. I'm one of those who has a hard time envisioning what success there will look like and yet she manages to make me feel some optimism.
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This is how I characterize the Canadian war effort in Afghanistan - Unsexy! In spite of costs in blood and treasure no one seems to really want to pay much attention to what's going on over on the other side of the world in our names. It's a bit different in the U.S. where they have two wars going on that the media does its' level best to avoid covering - except when something crazy happens like the head of the NATO command forces gets loose lipped on a case of Bud Light Lime and disses everybody up and down the chain of command.
There are days when I get so angry with the current state of the economy, with people like Steve Moore whom Paddy over at the Political Carnival linked to earlier advocating increased taxes on the poor in the US - the lack of readily available and decent paying jobs that have helped to shrink the middle-class over the past 30 years or so - that I sometimes joke on the radio program that I'm looking forward to a time when "Eat the rich," is no longer a bit of graffiti scrawled on a wall but a menu option. I'm gonna' sit down and order me one extra-large republican braised over a spit for two or three days in a tangy lemon-ginger sauce. I'm only...
I'm one of those who loves the heat and doesn't even mind when the temperatures soar into the mid-30's and beyond. My only complaint in the city would be when it comes without wind because then we get ground level ozone and...
Remember that story I blogged earlier about the corporatist Police State that we're now all inhabitants of (yeah, that includes Canada)? well, today over at ProPublica.org there's a story of a photographer who was followed and detained by BP security and the Police for taking innocuous photographs of signs in and around a BP refinery in Texas City. It's a story of...
The anti-climate-science crowd are apparently incapable of using the internet for anything other than surfing from one echo-chamber to the next and threatening people they disagree with. The so called "climategate" scandal has long since been debunked, and was in fact not a scandal at all - unless you think they shouldn't have stolen people's personal e-mails. Michael Mann's much maligned hockey-stick graph has been exonerated and while there were some MSM retractions there were no apologies. In fact two stalwart members of the MSM, the New York Times and The...
As I watched US policy take a drastic turn to the right during the administration of GWB jr. and Dick Cheney, I'll admit to being alarmed but not surprised. The Patriot act, unwarranted spying on Americans, "free speech zones," rendition, enhanced interrogation all seemed to be the wish fulfilment of a laundry list of items the right has always lobbied for. The Republicans have never been about increasing freedoms - other than 2nd amendment ones. So when Obama was inaugurated I thought all of this would be walked back and I was one of those who had no problems with the slow pace he was moving at figuring it would take considerable time to undo what Bush/Cheney had wrought. I'm starting...
I was reading a post over at Climate Progress about vanishing sea ice in the Arctic, and how in June it was at its' lowest extent and had gone through the fastest rate of decline in the satellite record and was thinking, "What does it matter?" The deniers will either claim it's not happening, or it's a one-off, or it's all part of some master plan to sandbag us all and they'll be loud enough and strident enough to continue to prevent real action from being taken. "Who the hell would these idiots listen to?" was the question that came to mind. Other than Jeebus, I mean.
Then...
Any excuse to play a Kermit the Frog song will do. Sadly Canada's Senate has decided to ignore the vote taken by Parliament on Bill C-311 which passed by a vote of 149-136 and requires the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.
NDP MP Bruce Hyer who drafted the bill says he has been told by Conservatives that the government has decreed that the bill cannot be passed into law. Mr. Hyer said it would be disappointing and “undemocratic” if the Conservatives killed the bill for what he called ‘ideological” reasons. But what else is there to be expected from the...
The New York Times is reporting this morning that the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting endangered species, signed off on the Mineral Management Service's...
Post Canada Day weekend, summer is well under way and the arrival of the silly season is nowhere in sight - unless you think McGuinty calling himself a liberal or the suspension of Canadian civil rights constitutes a laugh riot.
From the same publication a report on the...
Stephen Harper said he did not make climate change a priority at the recent G8 and G20 summits because it was a controversial issue. That is a bald-faced lie. It may be controversial to him and his climate science denying corporate pals but to the rest of the scientific world it is accepted science.
A recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences, involving 1,372 climate scientists, most considered top researchers in their field, shows that 97 percent agree that global warming is occurring and is being driven mainly by human activity - emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
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Hello there! Hope your Canada Day celebrations were great and it all went your way. Hope you spent it with family, ate great food and enjoyed summer weather.
Just stopped in to post about the shameful behaviour of Ontario's Premier, Dalton McGuinty. For those of you not...
I am not a flag waver by nature. In fact I feel pretty certain about stating that flag waving and nationalism throughout history has to led to terrible acts. In George Orwell's essay Notes on Nationalism he points to the narrow scope of the nationalist's point of view, A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may...
There is an entire segment of the population that doesn't want to deal with facts or science or anything they consider to be disagreeable, and they are called conservatives. In essence they have their own set of facts. In another era that would have gotten you institutionalized, today it gets you a job working for Fox News.
Below you can watch Rachel outline how much money BP has spent on spill response research in preparation of the kind of gusher we're witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico (hint: Nothing!).
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Hope you're getting ready to celebrate the year's best holiday. It comes without snow, without carols, without tinsel (unless your in Ottawa or somewhere where the citizens are particularly chauvinistic about our country), without massive financial obligations and the weather is generally pretty sweet. Sadly there's plenty of news to report on even though Parliament's on holiday until September.
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The behaviour exhibited by Toronto's police in this video that comes to us via therealnews.com is beyond reprehensible. They are violent, thuggish and deserve no respect or quarter. The explanation given by the police chief about the so-called Black Block being nearby as an excuse for the brutal and despicable response to peaceful demonstrators is a proven to be a bald faced lie in the video. This is our country, we should not stand by and tolerate this massive abusive of our freedoms.
Today's 1st story link is what the title is about. The relationship the people of the Gulf have with BP is like that of an abused spouse. The beatings are hard on the system but the only thing worse would be if the spouse left or was forced to leave. Alternet asks, when will we...
Trying to get back in a regular groove what with holidays and a weird sense of burning out on litany of lies crap and bad news. None of which would be half as bad were it not for the frustration I feel when it's not reported in on detail and with context by the MSM. Things have gotten far more wankerish here in Canada that I could have imagined - even with Harper at the helm.
That G-20 get-together that produced...
The news about the gusher in the Gulf continues to be bad and strangely we find out something new and terrible every week that this goes on. Today I learned that, unknown to the majority of the public, this particular area that was chosen by the BP...
This will be brief. There was more bad news from Afghanistan yesterday as two Canadians were amongst the six NATO soldiers that died during what has been the deadliest month for NATO forces since the nine year old war began. Master Corporal Kristal Giesebrecht, 34, and Private Andrew Miller, 21, were on their way to deal with a mine that had been found in the doorway of a home when the vehicle they were in detonated an IED killing them both.
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I'm expectantly waiting for summertime to bring an end to political wrangling of all sorts but maybe I'm being naive. Maybe it's just not possible in an era where the media operates under the rules of 'there must be constant frenzy' so as to continuously keep the readers titillated. Does this signal the death of the silly season in Canada?
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It's been all over the media already but I thought I should post top story of the last couple of days anyhow: Obama replaces McChrystal with General Petreus. In short, he found a way to dump McChrystal, for his ridiculous statements to a Rolling Stone reporter, and thus avoid being called a wimp or milquetoast. He did it without upsetting his Afghan allies, and the lack of uproar from the right on this speaks to his canniness on dealing with the crisis...
Other than the sound of too many mosquitoes and black flies, all should be quiet on most fronts in Canada. Sadly one of our fronts is Afghanistan, so there will be trouble to report on the whole season long. For example today a Rolling Stone interview with the NATO Commander, Stanley McChrystal was released and all hell broke loose. Read for yourself, but essentially the General displays a poor sense of judgement, gets drunk on Bud Light Lime, and then spills his guts to the reporter and it's not pretty. Viscera, entrails, the works!
That directly concerns and affects Canadians serving over there and their families at...
If there was anything that was ever emblematic of our corporate fellating culture it was this story from the Guardian about the lawyers fighting to put an end to the moratorium on deep sea drilling in the Gulf. They had the unmitigated gall to say that the ban on drilling was "...destroying an entire "ecosystem of businesses." This in the wake of actual...
Another Canadian soldier dies in Afghanistan - Sgt. James Macneil, 28, was killed by an improvised explosive device while on foot patrol in Kandahar. Heartfelt condolences. This comes on the heels of a...
On this morning's radio show the focus was climate change and the current state of our oceans and their general health. Starting with a story from Science Daily about a newly published report in the latest issue of the journal Science that evaluates the total impact of climate change, carbon dioxide, pollution and other human-related phenomena on the world's oceans. Scott C. Doney's paper represents a meticulous compilation of the work of others as well as his own research in this area, which includes ocean acidification, climate change, and the global carbon cycle. An important read if you are trying to understand all the factors in play.
...I try to avoid anything I can't verify with multiple sources here at the blog. Even when I can find them, if what I'm reading is out there (alarmist) I'll take my time before posting it, knowing that the blogosphere will always be ahead of the MSM.
For the last month I've been tripping across information about the...
So the MP's have all gone home. Worked themselves to the bone for more than two straight months and away they went - some will come back for the summits but that's all just for photo-ops. In their wake they left the oversized omnibus budget Bill C-9, with provisions that have nothing to do with the country's finances, like for example, exempting commercial projects from rules designed to protect the environment - pretty short-sighted in light of the ongoing Deepwater Horizon disaster. There was an agreement on the thorny Afghan detainee document...
Hi, and welcome back! Going to try and catch up on the storie I've covered on the radio show but not had time to post. It all begins with Rush Limbaugh this weekend as his brand of sickening hate radio and politics leaves me angry and feeling somewhat hopeless. Why is this tolerated? What does it say about the level and nature of so-called political discourse in the land to the south? The divisive nature plays into corporate interests as they divide us one from the other so they can fleece us. You'll note that he's still defending Joe Barton's (R-Tex) tone deaf apology to BP that has been roundly denounced.
...President Obama's Tuesday night address was universally panned. It's hard not to like Rachel's version better.
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On a day when even the stenographers in the press report that the deal forged between the Bloc, the Liberals and the Conservatives is a mess and filled with loopholes the Tories mean to exploit, there are actually things the Tories are up to that are worse and more cynical, Things like not allowing staff members to...
I promised to withhold judgement on the deal reached between 3 of Canada's 4 major parties over the Afghan Detainee documents. The NDP walked away from the deal saying that the deal shields the most crucial detainee information from scrutiny. Go read for yourself. Jack Harris of the NDP puts it succinctly: “The things you need to know — What did the government know? When did they know it? What advice were they given? Did they follow it? — that’s the stuff we will never see."
An example of the kind of advice the Tories would be getting from lawyers, information that they will be shielded from committee scrutiny under this...
Oil execs get grilled by Congress and admit they're not well equipped to handle disasters.
Cue speech from the President on need for real change. We're rooting for him. Let's hope he can be as good as his word. Remember one of the reasons he's going after BP hammer and tong is it's been 21 years and Exxon still has not paid even the piddling amount (for them) they were fined. In fact before dime one was ever paid as compensation to victims of Valdez oil spill, 8,000 of the potential recipients had already died.
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Reading that the Senate was incapable of busting up the omnibus budget bill known as C-9 sickened me. There was no excuse in the first place to leave it to the Senate to fix this...
Every day more proof rolls in like the tide of BP's malfeasance in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Not just their unwillingness to give accurate assessments of how much oil is spewing into the Gulf, or their desire to prevent the press from showing the true picture of the extent of the mess and take photographs that break people's hearts, but criminal negligence and stupidity which led directly to the catastrophe.
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So word came out yesterday that Afghanistan is loaded with mineral riches. A trillion dollars worth or more. Now the US has spent 250 billion dollars in a war over there so far, so that means the return on their investment won't be fabulous but it does maybe explain why they'd fight for years and years in a vast ungovernable hellhole of a country famous for being the graveyard of empires. There's a pretty good chance that this was known to American intelligence some time ago.
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Usually I like to intro any video I post but I thought this spoke rather eloquently for itself.
The disaster in the Gulf continues apace and as the news gets worse, word is Obama is going to address the nation on Tuesday and take concrete steps to make sure BP pays for what the have wrought. I can hear the caterwauling from the right already. One...
Polling at an all time high! Maybe it's because I'm covering more Canadian news than ever but there do seem to be a glut of polls taking place. The changes to this point have all been of the incremental kind so we try not to get too carried away with the results one way or another. The latest EKOS poll has the Tories at 31.4% which just isn't very much. The progressive vote,...
The Canadian Political landscape is a lot more restive than it ordinarily is at this time of year. Maybe it's because three months of the year disappeared down a prorogue hole or maybe it's because the Tories are busily trying to cram their agenda down the throats of parliament just before the break and Canadians are taking notice or perhaps wanton spending on the upcoming summits have made Canadians suspicious of a government that claims it is fiscally conservative. Whatever the reason, things are in a state of flux it would seem.
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Was under the weather and couldn't make it in for the show but will be there Friday morning. In the meantime here's a whole bunch of links to the war news and the continuously gushing spill in the Gulf.
Since everyone seems to give the overseas wars short shrift, I start there.
General McChrystal seems to be stalling for time so that coming...
Been busying myself with posts on single issues of late and kind of enjoying it. It's not really how my radio show works so it seems odd sometimes and I feel as if I may be short-shrifting the readers who show up looking for the day's wrap on Canadian politics. There's really not that much news out of Ottawa at this time of year (or there shouldn't be) as the silly season in Canadian politics is set to swing into high gear so we'll do our best.
I can remember being a kid and watching the film about a future dystopia, "Soylent Green," and thinking it quaint. I don't get that same sense of kitschy fun now when I view it. Characters portrayed by Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson live in...
With our PM there's never any shortage of adjectives to hurl his way. He makes it easy, heck he even inspired us at NMPCanada to create two new ones just for him: assalogue and sanctihole. Today however, we're going to stick to words that are already in the English dictionary.
From Debora MacKenzie at New Scientist comes an article on the psychology of denialists. It's illuminating and helps to explain how we can be in the middle of a crisis - Global Warming - and the concrete steps necessary to mitigate this imminent disaster are for the most part not being taken.
Reading that the current administration in Ottawa has decided to jump into what's called a "sole-sourced" (think no-bid) purchase of 65 high-priced fighter jets, I can't help but get a...
I probably pick on Iggy too much, but it's only because I like him. Not as leader of the Liberal Party per say, but as a person. I've seen him up close, followed what he has too say and it's pretty obvious he's a decent and caring human being. Which does not necessarily make him the best candidate to be a party leader - in fact quite the opposite. He would be better suited, it often seems to me, to be the policy wonk behind the scenes doing policy grunt work. Or, as I've said before, he should be the guy behind the guy, and not the guy.
At every turn Harper seems to have had an edge on Michael Ignatieff up until now. Even when he was using cheap American style politicking tricks like demagoguing, fear-mongering and sneering....
Been trying not to make all my posts about the disaster in the Gulf of late. It's playing out long, slowly and painfully. We made pretty good calls here based on common sense and decent internet sources. The first being that there was no way the rate of flow was anything like only 5,000 barrel a day. The figure has now been set at 19,000 or so and that's still low-balling the true figure - as is pointed out all over news sites on...
We're on the cusp of the Canadian political silly season - that magical time of year when not very much happens in Canadian politics and this year Canadian politicians will take a long break from a short period of governing after a taking a long break (the prorogue) from governing.
On a personal level, I've been a bit tired and had a hard time getting to the Canadian posts this weekend but I do love it and made a...
I don't check the 'this day in history' calendar but on the eve of June 6th I don't need to be reminded that this is the 66th anniversary of D-Day, when Canadian soldiers joined with allied forces and stormed the beaches at Normandy marking the beginning of the end of the...
There's nothing like taking a couple of days off to help you fall behind!
I'm going to start with the story that actually kept me from blogging Friday and Saturday: I checked in late and the first story the blogosphere brought to my attention was this ghastly story out of Arizona courtesy of Wonkette:
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On a slow-news Thursday in Canada, you might be inclined to skip the headlines and let it all slide. After all you're busy. There's a weekend to plan for... hell, there's a whole summer to plan for! Surely you take can a couple of days off from paying attention and let things take care of themselves.
Sadly, that's seemingly never how it goes anymore. There's hardly a day where they...
Starting to feel like there's nothing going on in the world except that disaster in the Gulf sometimes, but the crimes are so egregious and the people behind them so shameless.
Tony - I want my life back - Hayward and BP have a new advertising campaign going to try and...
No, that's not a headline for a post on evolution but rather a question about how did the spill in the Gulf come to pass? How is it that oil companies could be self-regulating? All MSM spin aside, who really is responsible for the volcano in the Gulf otther than BP, Transocean and Haliburton? Rebecca Lefton of the Center for American Progress has the answer, and it ain't Obama.
She reports that every year from 2001 to 2008 included tax breaks for coal, oil and gas and nuclear...
Hello. Going to try and post as many links a fast as possible to make sense out of one day at the beginning of what is usually called the silly season.
Want to tell you right up front, I'm a big Obama fan. Even though he's too conservative for my political tastes, I like the guy. He seems overly cautious and too concerned with making nice with his Republican opponents who...
After reading headlines like that I'm sure I could knock you over with a feather. Certainly that's how I feel when I read something that inane. Yet, there you have it. The Globe and Mail announcing the Tories hate the idea of the...
BP is trying another technique to stem the flow of oil into the ocean called "cut and cap" - it is apparently fraught with risk and could actually increase the flow of...
On Monday, Israel outraged the world community by attacking, boarding and murdering nine peace activists aboard a ship that was headed for Gaza in hopes of breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza. ...
Awoke this morning to the smell of smoke and promptly started looking around my house for its' source. Checked downstairs, asked my wife if she'd burned anything to start the day - no, nothing. Shrugged it off and went to the radio station noticing when I arrived that the smell was present. Turns out there's...
If BP's attitude towards stopping the oil from gushing into the Gulf, was the same as it is to trying to defend their corporate brand and defray costs, then that wellhead would have long ago been capped.
Astonishingly this...
So first we write up a story about how the only people taking action on doing something about taking the non-budget items out of the tories budget bill, C-9, are members of Canada's normally phlegmatic Senate. Now I'm here to tell you that Jack Layton has jumped aboard the...
A couple of months ago a weekend spent in the Gulf would probably be part of a pretty desirable vacation package. Now it's a nightmarish thought and getting worse every day. Word Saturday afternoon is the "top kill" procedure absolutely...
Were this the first day of April, I'd hold back on posting this, but the calendar has been checked and the sources too, so I'm running with it. Word from the...
The name BP decided upon - ""top-kill" - for their attempt at stopping the oil and gas from continuously spewing into the Gulf of Mexico is thick with dark irony. There are no laughs here sadly, merely devastation. As for what they've killed so far, no one can tell - other than the livelihoods of fisherman in the Gulf.
Scientists took a trip aboard a research vessel called the F..G. Walton Smith...
If you're rubbing your eyes or you're sitting there thinking to yourself, "Good one Karl! Always room for more sarcasm when discussing Canada's sleepy Senate." Well, think again. Members of the Senate are unhappy with Harper's omnibus style budget that is loaded with crap that has nothing to do with the budget and are getting ready to carve it up. They even have the support of Progressive Conservative Senator Lowell Murray.
Since...
Okay, that's a bit of a reach but tonight for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon blew up and the spill in the Gulf began I read the words I've been longing to hear from those in power. The Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid: "This is an opportunity for us as a country to move away from fossil fuel, to do a better job of looking at renewable energies that are available to us all over this country." Hallelujah!
It's more than just the ongoing spill, we know that in our mad efforts to burn cheap fossil fuels more accidents of this nature will happen - read an interesting analysis of how and why at...
The more I sift through the Canuck news on a daily basis the more frustrated I become. I don't understand why that frustration is not shared and why complacency is the order of the day. Near as I can tell both the Liberals and the NDP have been given the gift of Harper, an obfuscating idealogue whose policies do not reflect how most Canadians feel on... pick a topic!
They should...
As a strategy, being arrogant jerks hasn't worked out very well for BP. Tony Hayward has quickly weasled his way into the top ten most hated people on the planet (conjecture) and he's made his company massively unpopular. There's talk of debarment and boycotts but there's something else going on. You can feel it in the news reports and the comments written at the news sites - people are disgusted by BP's behaviour since the spill.
ABC's Good Morning America sent Sam Champion and Phillipe Cousteau to dive right into the affected area in the Gulf. It's pretty disgusting and...
Took time off following my show on Friday, but being a good ex-Catholic I'm feeling guilty about it - doesn't seem to matter to my sub-concious that I'm now agnostic - so an early Sunday morning post for anyone checking in.
Thankfully the scrutiny Canadians have been giving to the state our own off-shore drilling means the ...
The title says it all. No one has a clue right now except that this is far worse than the Valdez but the extent is essentially unknown as are the far-reaching consequences.
The first story I saw today about the gusher in the Gulf was BP essentially claiming domonion over the waters they have polluted, telling the EPA that they...
Today, I thought I'd get a bit personal. I didn't post links to the usual litany of stories on Friday as a week of staring at the computer was just too much. I'm the host of New Media and Politics, a progressive radio talk show and play jazz in between the stories. Most of the stories I talk about were found somewhere in the blogosphere or on twitter. Needless to say,...
A spate of recent attacks in Afghanistan making it look like it could be a long summer for NATO allies which doesn't auger well for Canadians either of course. Taking place all over Afghanistan and talk is that this is...
Beginning with unsexy war blogging: Analysis suggests it will be near impossible for Obama to achieve a drawdown in Iraq by the August deadline. A brazen attack in Afghanistan on Bagram Air...
Increasingly the US government is being blamed for failing to conduct proper scientific studies of the disaster and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. BP is urging those who are working in...
The Saga of the BP Valdez Continues...
More news pours in about the gusher in the Gulf and BP continues to do everything it can to hide what's happening. Word is that the oil spill will soon be threatening the east coast of the US. There's also word today from CBS in what they call, ...the most disturbing site yet: the first heavy sludge now oozing into the marshes of Louisiana as the slick continues to grow in size out in the gulf. Almost as maddening is this from the same report that: Kelly Cobiella of the CBS News...
Leading off stories with politics and Canucks in mind is the suicide bombing in Kabul which has claimed the lives of Six NATO soldiers, including Canadian Colonel Geoff Parker, 42, a member of the Royal Canadian Regiment who died when a massive car bomb struck a NATO convoy on the edge of the Afghan capital of Kabul. Included in the casualties are 12 civilians with 47 more wounded.
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Another day of our coverage of the BP Valdez, beginning with reports that the currents in the Gulf are now moving the oil slick in the direction of the Florida Keys. Think Progress reports, as I've said numerous times on my radio program, as this moves around Florida, the next or another critical area would be the Florida Keys...
Hello there and thanks for showing up!
Sadly, we are going to begin with more Unsexy War blogging. This was the Canadian news focus on my radio show this morning. Starting with: the casket carrying the latest Canadian soldier to die in the Afghanistan mission,...
It's a spectacular May day in Montreal and coincidently sunlight appears to be breaking through the MSM too. At least so far as the BP gusher in the Gulf story is conncerned.
Last night on CBS's 60 Minutes, in the best tradition of this program, they dug into all aspects of the spew, reporting that approximately a Valdez worth of oil has been gushing in the Gulf waters each week since the April 20 explosion, and a lot of people got to hear for perhaps the first time the extent of the failures, greed and hubris that led to this collossal disaster. An example of the carelessness as reported last night:
...in a drilling accident four weeks...
Apparently no amount of facts or reports to the contrary will change or make the various medias disregard BP's estimate that 210,000 gallons per day are being spilled into the Gulf. Almost every news site I visited yesterday had the lying BP estimate - the singular exception was the NYT's article linked below. Stenography would seem to be the order of the day, and newspaper companies ask why more people don't subscribe.
Starting a full 2 weeks ago those numbers...
News of a plea deal being offered to Omar Khadr surfaced weeks ago as the Obama administration did not want to be seen prosecuting someone who was 15 years old when he was plucked off the battlefield. Add to that evidence of abuse at the...
There's no way for me to begin that doesn't include the day's biggest butthole: Tony Hayward, the BP CEO who said today of the oil spewing into the Gulf, "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." We would like to offer him a very tiny bit of anthrax or maybe a dollop o' rat poison...
I was wrong. I never thought the Conservatives had any intention of making a deal with the opposition on the release of the heavily redacted documents relating to torture of Afghan detainees and were instead involved in a game of chicken with what appears to be a chicken-hearted opposition. Today however all the parties involved arrived at a deal:
So here we are on the eve of the deadline for the negotiated release of the Afghan detainee issue documents that was extended past the original two weeks, as ordered by Speaker of the House Peter Milliken, and there's an impasse. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. I'm shocked that the impasse didn't occur earlier. I'll say it clearly now, I never expected the tories to relent and and I had even less confidence...
