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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.