Happy 2012! Thanks for dropping by - here's the link to the petition to to keep Jasper National Park public and safe from harmful development by private companies. Talk tomorrow - let me know if you want more news links posted regularly by emailing me at oldpunk@cjlo.com.
All blog posts
On this morning's program I'm playing the interview that took place on William F. Buckley's program 'Firing Line.' Below is the embed from the Crooks and Liars sister website Newstalgia. It's remarkable, provocative and absolutely the kind of interview that would never take place in today's media environment. Enjoy and please feel free to comment and tell me what you thought of it. (For some reason the player doesn't work on firefox but it does work on IE - so if you don't like IE go to this link: http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/newstalgia-reference-ro... )
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I'm back to post links for stories that I talk about on the show. Hope you enjoyed today's with the better part of the 1st hour devoted to Jack Layton, a man who will be missed and may be irreplacable so far as the NDP are concerned.
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A bunch of links from around the Canadian web all related to the upcoming democratic exercise that is so pissing Stephen Harper off!
The Conservative Leader refuses to comment on reports of campaign rally attendees being kicked out or barred entry...
Not discussed in any detail yet on this campaign was the gutting of an important Canadian institution: Statistics Canada. For those with short memories here is a sample of the fear-mongering, that preceded their doing away with the mandatory long form census, that came from the mouth of Industry Minister Tony Clement: “I cannot support the opposition's belief that Canadians not wishing to answer these questions are criminals,” Mr. Clement said in a statement released Tuesday evening. “It is truly regrettable that the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois will not take a reasonable approach to addressing personal privacy rights of...
This is rich! The Liberals have quickly put a very timely ad out there about Canadians being denied the right to attend Harper rallies if they're wearing the wrong t-shirts or have the wrong bumper stickers on their cars or have befriended sketchy liberal types on their facebook pages. The quick turnaround so far as this ad goes is very impressive. Have a good laugh and ask yourself if this reminds you of anything?
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When writing about the 2011 Canadian election, it could be a pretty facile exercise to point to the Conservative candidate, proclaim he's just like his American counterpart (Bush) and then go further and declare that the tactics used as being the same as those used by the oft vilified Karl Rove, aka Bush's Brain. So let's get specific and take a hard look at exactly what is this playbook all about.
First, go on the offensive and establish the public perception of their candidate, define what the major issues of the campaign are and do everything in your power to influence the...
As the parties enter their second full week Harper's strategy of attacks based on a fictional premise, taking credit for the recovery, avoiding answering inconvenient questions and pretending he has nothing to do with the sketchy cast of characters surrounding him is working... at least according to the latest NANOS poll. Their lead over the Liberals has increased in the last week in spite of numerous missteps by the PM and his party in the opening week of the campaign.
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Wresting the narrative away from the spinners and media is an auspicious way to open a campaign and Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party deserve a lot of credit for taking this beast by its' antlers and waging a far better than anticipated opening to their campaign.
The Ignatieff platform delivered Sunday, is what he is calling his 'Family Pack' of measures that will deliver relief to the Canadian middle-class. There are details about the costing of some of the already announced initiatives, including $1 billion to be spent on the Family...
In the previous post about media coverage of the NDP, my desire was to illustrate one of the many ways in which the media can help to marginalize ideas and even an entire political party. It all depends on what aspect of a story they choose to emphasize.
This can work both ways of course. You can help make a party look good by omitting mention of important parts of their tacit platform....
There's little chance that Jack Layton will get a fair reading of his platform and people's response to it from the mainstream Canadian media. A great example of this is a sleazy little piece written by Gloria Galloway, who's covering the NDP campaign for the right leaning Globe and Mail. She chooses to lead off her article by insinuating that the last time the NDP held a town hall meeting in a northern Ontario locale, it was staged. No proof, just a snide aside and an unsubstantiated rumour.
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You can't overstate the importance of the role the media plays in shaping how election campaigns and the candidates themselves are perceived. So early on here during the race I've been keeping track of things the media is trying to spin for us. For example did you know Harper got off to fast start in this campaign and had Iggy in his heels over the coalition fear-mongering? You didn't? Well that's because it's preposterous!
It was...
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 having a difficult time not writing about Stephen's petulance as if he were some whiny assed titty-baby. His contempt for his opponents, the Canadian people and democracy in general have been difficult to watch during the first week of the campaign. He's apparently decided that at campaign stops he's only going to answer five questions. That's it! Five questions and no more, and the media is to be kept in a cage away from wherever he is. Can't you just smell the transparency and accountability that Harper has brought to Ottawa these past five years?
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For those who drop in and check out the election related news links I've been posting and my comments you've probably noticed I have some talent for being able to read tea leaves, but for all I know perhaps it's just a talent for the bleeding obvious. There's little need to be cocksure about this. After all, most in the progressive Canadian blogosphere had also noted that the Liberals started this election season off smartly and that their campaign had quickly gathered momentum. This sentiment was backed up by yesterday's early poll numbers. But there's five more weeks to go and so while it's a good sign for those of us who wish to see someone other than Stephen Harper as Prime Minister there's a lot of drama to play out yet and it...
Okay, so I've coined a silly word and am probably jumping the gun on this. Michael Ignatieff has only a smidgen of momentum but it's a good start for a guy who has been unable to get any for almost three years now. According to pollster Nik Nanos, Iggy's improved Leadership Index Score, a compendium of responses measuring voter attitudes toward trust, competence, and vision among the party leaders, is only really significant if it continues down this path. Leadership scores Nonos says are a leading indicator of momentum. “When a leader’s numbers start going up or down, there’s usually movement in the poll after that.”
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With five parties vying for Canadians votes -- the Bloc of course restricted to the province of Quebec where they will likely to retain or at least be in contention for approximately one sixth of the seats available in Canada -- there are a lot of narratives to pay attention to.
Starting with Michael Ignatieff who today will offer more money for middle-class families as he announces the third major plank in a platform he is funding with the $6-billion he says will be saved by reversing corporate tax cuts. This announcement, at a pharmacy in Vancouver, follows his $1-billion pledge Tuesday for the so-...
I have had my heart set on going to the polls since last year when Harper, our Evangelical Christian PM, reverted to form once again and started cramming his beliefs into Canadian policy. For me it began when he and his party decided to deny funding for maternal health care to organizations that included abortion services in their health care options. This program was for women in the developing world who are often the victims of war, rape, extreme poverty and incest. This is a reversal of what has been Canada's position on maternal health in poor countries for almost three decades. But no matter, his highness had spoken: if we...
I'm a fan of Green Party policies and sincerely wish for their sake that they capture a seat or two as they deserve a seat at the table. Have a listen and maybe go check out their site:
When observing the Conservative ideologue performing its' ritual mating dance (on the campaign trail making stuff up), it's important to keep in mind the a lot of the promises made during the dance will never come to fruition. For example, today on the hustings Harper promised a $2.5-billion tax break pledge aimed at parents of children under 18 -- a measure that would allow parents to split, or share, up to $50,000 of household income for tax purposes providing tax relief for almost 1.8 million families who would save on average $1,300 per year.
But there's a catch: It won't take effect until the deficit is...
Here's the links to American wankery and International news that were covered on this morning's radio show to help you get the week started.
Beginning with the Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman and his thoughts on what he calls the 'Austerity Delusion.' That is tax monies to help bail out corporations but austerity in all its forms for working people in Europe and North America under the guise of fixing the economy... and surprise, it's not working!
The xenophobes in US politics can now count the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza (Herman Cain) as being one of them, and he swears if elected president he'll...
Michael Ignatieff deserves credit for political bravery this week for forcing an election while trailing in the polls. In fact they have trailed in most every snapshot poll since the last election, their best numbers only getting them to within the margin of error a handful of times. By any measure in politics that takes courage but especially in an era of 10-15 second sound bites. It`s short-attention-span theatre out there in voterland. A factor that makes it far more difficult to talk about policy differences and their impacts on everyday life in a meaningful way.
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The 2011 Canadian election campaign is off to a predictable start with Harper calling the election "unnecessary" and trying to raise the spectre of governance by a coalition that includes "socialists" and "separatists," as something Canadians have to keep in mind when voting.
So let's do that. Let's face the supposedly frightening prospect of a coalition. Why is it such a terrible idea for these...
I should have hung a "Gone Fishing" sign on the little blog but for some reason couldn't bring myself to do it. My thinking was that any day the burnt out feeling that had come over me in late December would wash away and I'd be able to pick right up where I left off. Well, I was partially right. I was just wrong about how long it would take until I started feeling better.
Things aren't where I left them...
I wanted to round off NMP's coverage of Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks story with a list (courtesy of Alternet.org) of eight misconceptions and smears about WikiLeaks by the media. As Glenn Greenwald notes in his column over at Salon, the MSM is going at Mr. Assange and his reputation as if he were Saddam Hussein, and of course as we all know Saddam was Hitler. Of this approach to Mr. Assange, Greenwald says,
I was trying to say in the previous post that I'm not a big fan of year end lists and it doesn't always make sense with the news as there are the stories that will continue to play out and those that have played out. At the top of my mind for the year's most important story has to be the pace at which global warming is affecting the world's weather systems and how the climate this year mimicked the most alarming of the climate models predictions for the course climate change would take. It was an eye-opening year in climate science with seemingly innumerable scientific studies and predictions that point credibly to the fact that human civilization...
I'm not a big fan of journalism that feels a need to rank the year's most important stories by how much attention they received by the various media. That same media we all know has a self-serving corporate tilt to the right and inane stories about celebrities misbehaving. Stories about policy and its effects on our everyday life are not what the alphabet soup of ABC NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, FOX are in the business of providing. As I've said on the radio show repeatedly, "they exist to sell you soap, corporate propaganda and wars, and they are damned good at it!"
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I could do a ten part blog piece with endless links to why the past year - which I've named year of the wanker -- sucked!
Here in Canada we've been saddled with a party of ideologues to lead the nation and implement policy. Combine that with feckless opposition from the Liberals and the ineffectual NDP and you have a perfect storm for shoving right wing policy down the throats of Canadians. And the best part (so far as Tories are concerned) is no one really...
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!
While the MSM does what it can to ignore the myriad of issues raised by what was contained in the WikiLeaks releases this year, or pretend that the leakers themselves are the criminals. Glenn Greenwald does what he can to shine a light on a bunch of them. Go take a look at the extent of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world's most powerful players.Then, ask yourself why any of the stories uncovered by WikiLeaks aren't amongst the most important stories of the year and you begin to understand that these same players have an inordinate control over the media and the messaging:
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Here In Canada
The Tories break another promise and will spend only half of what they promised to encourage Canadians to fill out the 2011 short census and a new voluntary survey. It's galling but predictable and no doubt no will really take notice during the busy holiday season. The government is not interested in providing reliable information as that gets in their way of marginalizing the poor and aboriginals. Statistics Canada, once considered the most reliable and comprehensive source of information, relied on as a tool to respond to the needs and priorities of every Canadian has been...
Polls
Starting here in Quebec where the Bloc continue to lead in the polls but surprisingly Jack Layton’s NDP are now tied with the Liberals in second place at 21 percent, maintaining their record level of support for a second consecutive month.
Proof that the EKOS pollsters favour the Conservatives, EKOS pollster Frank Graves, declares Stephen Harper’s performance at the Conservative caucus Christmas party this week may just provide a needed bounce for the Tories as they go...
I save most of the week's science news for Thursdays on the big radio show and this week with the meet-up in Cancun going on there is as much alarming news being ignored by your MSM as in any other week. Joe Romm over at ClimateProgress.org reprints a Yale e360 piece written by J.E.N. Veron the former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, that is dramatic and sobering. Veron says, "the science is clear: Unless we change the way we live, the Earth’s coral reefs will be utterly destroyed within our children’s lifetimes.”
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There's a seemingly important revelation in the WikiLeaks cables that is not getting a lot of attention. One of the cables is a leaked diplomatic memo that has European Union President Herman Van Rompuy telling America's ambassador stating that the EU no longer believes in success in Afghanistan. That European troops are still there only “out of deference to the United States.” This what it has come to, nations send their kids into battle and perhaps die for the sake of deference to the U.S.. This of course includes Canada.
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Trying to do right by my radio show and this blog at the same time is consuming which is okay by me or I wouldn't do it. My problem is I'm afraid of being redundant when I finally get to story that's a couple of days old so far as the Canadian Progressive blogosphere goes because there's very little that doesn't get covered and linked to there. One such story was probably pointed out to me by someone in the community and I can't let it pass without mention. It's a story that should inspire headlines about G-20 police brutality coast to coast but it didn't even merit mention in my local...
I spend a great deal of time editing myself in this blog and on my radio show. My fear is about sinking to the level of people like Tom Flanagan, the former advisor to Stephen Harper and yet I wonder if I am being too damned prissy. He is quite bluntly a scumbag and when the revolution comes I believe he and his ilk will be the first to be put up against the wall -- and deservedly so.
The fact that he feels he can with impunity make threats against Julian Assange says everything one needs to know about where our country is heading under continued Tory rule. The elite and the police can do as they please and the rest of can expect to be harassed for trying to stand up for our rights and things we believe in.
Witness Flanagan's response to Janet Reymond who...
The idea of maintaining net neutrality as it already exists is so as to prevent phone and cable companies blocking, slowing down, or discriminating against internet traffic over their broadband networks. Maintaining net neutrality was one of the Obama administrations top campaign pledges to the technology industry and the issue is headed for a showdown over rules to ensure an open internet. The Federal Communications Commission confirmed last week that it will vote on a net neutrality proposal at its December 21 meeting.
The plan outlined by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski includes five basic points: meaningful transparency; a ban on blocking lawful apps and services; a...
The redoubtable Julian Assange has fired back against the unrelenting attacks against him by threatening that if he were to be brought to trial on the rape accusations he faces in Sweden, or for treason charges that have been suggested by some U.S. politicians, he will release the encryption key to the 1.3-gigabyte file protected with an unbreakable 256-bit encryption key that contains the full versions of all the U.S. documents received by WikiLeaks to date. This includes those that have been withheld from publication or have had names and details removed in order to protect the lives of spies, sources and soldiers.
...Some of the WikiLeaks information that has come to public attention has been amusing, as for example the apparent obsession with Canadian prime time shows shown by American diplomats who warn of our creating insidious American stereotypes. Where would we get the idea that they were war-mongers, torturers, violators of international treaties and bullies? We must be crazy!
My favourite kind of blogging is when people I admire put it all in a speech and make all the points I wanted to make in a nice tight 13 minutes. In this case it's the remarkable Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, who talks about the war being waged against the middle class by the the legion of Republicans who happily do the bidding of the wealthy and corporate classes. This is the kind of speech that the MSM goes well out of their way to ignore and failing that, marginalize. It's damning in every sense of the word and it's a wonder that Americans spend so much time fighting each other when the real enemy is right in front of their noses 24/7 on the box every day of the week!
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To try and catch up with stories covered Wednesday and Thursday on the big show is what I'm here for. There was a terrific interview of Noam Chomsky from the Democracy Now people that I played a portion of on my show -- watch the full interview below:
Part 2:
He's well spoken, thoughtful not in thrall to any corporate interests or agenda and rarely heard in the MSM for those very same reasons.
I have no sympathy for the idiots in the US State Department who are busy crying foul over the WikiLeaks release. As stated in this Miami Herald article which quotes spokespeople from the Pentagon, there is no proof that anyone has been harmed as a result. In direct contrast there is ample evidence that the Americans ongoing wars of choice continue to see innocent civilians killed daily in Afghanistan and Iraq, where despite claims the war there is over the Americans have left behind 50,000 combat ready troops as well as thousands of modern day mercenaries (i.e. Blackwater/...
At every turn I extend the benefit of the doubt to our soldiers serving overseas. For the most part this is true of most of the people in the various media. The boys are following orders, doing their best and deserve our support. So when I read about soldiers handing over prisoners to the notorious NDS (Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security) who are infamous for using torture, I assume this is the fault of the policy makers and blame them and not the soldiers, and hope that somehow our system of justice will eventually hold those who are responsible for such actions accountable -- this is apparently pie in the sky as Prime Minister Harper manages to subvert democracy and accountability at every turn with the unwitting help of the opposition.
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Hardly a day goes by without the demagogues in the American right-wing attacking Obama for being different from ordinary Americans, or characterized as having a different set of beliefs or being foreign born or some such rot. It's a testament to the failure of the various media that they allow themselves to be used to propagate this slander and thinly veiled racism all the while pretending that it's being done in the name of "balance."
Always...
Snow on the ground here in Montreal and there's a pleasant quiet in the house and on the surrounding streets. A good time to sit down and read my favourite Globe and Mail writer Gerald Caplan, who yesterday was talking about Canada enlisting in America's forever war -- something I've written a considerable amount about here at NMP. It's somewhat gratifying to read in Canada's MSM an opinion that reflects what I see for Canada in the Afghanistan quagmire. I'm okay with being a dirty leftist hippie but now and then I do want to believe...
Hello listeners! A bit behind so far as blogging the show goes so prepare for a bunch of links -- I'll try to emphasize the ones you really shouldn't miss. I didn't make work today because of the recurrence of insane headaches that I've recently become prone to. I don't know if it's allergies or too much research on the intertubes but either way they're quite debilitating, so sorry for not being there -- although from what I could make out from what took place with this morning's weather I might not have made it anyhow.
Starting with what should be a huge story so far as global warming is concerned but so far has received very little coverage in the media, Antarctic waters are warming and a...
When my local fishwrap prints an unbalanced op-ed piece that comes from someone shilling for the oil and gas industry I get angry I'll admit but I also have come to expect it. My real complaint is that they almost never print an opposing opinion on the same day for balance. Truth is most people don't read the newspaper every day anymore and so if the local paper prints a differing opinion sometime later in the week it may not be seen and a lying narrative is born. The narrative can be killed or have a stake drriven though it but if no one is there to read it then it lives again as a zombie lie -- the purpose of these kinds of zombie narratives is to obscure the truth and affect public policy. The last ten years are rife with examples of zombie lies regularly disseminated...
Over at Rabble.ca Murray Dobbin has written a timely piece about our sociopathic corporate overlords and makes a great argument for changing how we view and deal with this phenomena, beginning with taking away their personhood. Turns out that voters in the US, where this year's Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court has enshrined this kind of corporate citizenship allowing for their unlimited spending in political campaigns, want Congress to amend the Constitution and overturn this ruling by a double-digit margin.
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You just know reading the title I'm going to start talking about the tea party wing of the Republican party. These people are John Birchers with a new handle and a lot of shadowy money funding their activities. Now you may think you already know how dumb these people can be -- after all they backed Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell and...
By the time Monday shows up there's usually a whole raft of important stories being ignored by the various media in favour of the more sensationalist or celebrity related news (caution!). That doesn't even count news about the hypocritical Palin and the rest of her clan which is now a whole separate industry. Barbara Bush for one, wishes she would just go away.
Still, occasionally an important story breaks through the vapidity...
Monday's at the radio show are named mayhem because of the importance of alliteration in radio and because of the wide array of stories that present themselves after two days away from the mike. Starting with a story from The Mark, a story we've talked at some length about on New Media and Politics, the Tories mad desire to imprison more Canadians, build new prisons at a time when crime rates are historically low (Tories plan to build 13 new prisons to accommodate more prisoners and harsher sentences) and imitate our American cousins by instituting mandatory minimums for crimes like possession of marijuana.
A story about the ambiguous announcements (surprise!) coming out of the NATO get-together in Lisbon...
On Friday morning I'm rushing off to work and take a quick peek at the Montreal Gazette and see an editorial entitled, "The Senate was right to kill the climate-change bill," by Tom Harris. At the bottom it reads that he is the executive director of an organization called the International Climate Science Coalition.
As the NATO member nations make their way to Lisbon for the big meet-up this weekend that will tell the world where the war in Afghanistan is headed and how 2014 is now the date that the war will end, there are signs that suggest that is utter bullshit. Here's the first paragraph from the Globe and Mail on the get-together:
The meeting, which begins Friday, will bring together the 28 countries that are members of the alliance to define the threats it faces in the future, discuss the possibility of a shared missile defence shield and restart talks on security co-operation...
UPDATED: It has been pointed out to me that my previous post on US budget spending may have been misleading and so I want to clear it up.
Discretionary spending was $1.39 trillion, or 38% of total spending of the US budget in FY 2010. It is that part of the U.S. Federal Budget that is negotiated between the President and Congress each year as part of the budget process. It includes everything that is not in the mandatory budget, which are programs required by law to provide certain benefits, such as Social Security and Medicare.
This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear...
The beginning of the first sentence of this Globe and Mail article left me flummoxed, "In the midst of a national debate on pension reform..." What? When did this debate begin? Who's having it? Whose idea was it to have this "national debate?" Why wasn't I informed? I read every damned newspaper there is!
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 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, 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 so far as discretionary spending goes they spend the bulk of it on their military.
A...
Yesterday the CBC reported CNRL's Horizon oilsands project near Fort McKay, Alta. and the possible environmental problems that a talings pond which has containing berms on only three of its sides could cause the local environment. The reports are that a toxic sludge is flowing into the muskeg from an uncontained western edge. The western edge of the pond uses a rise in elevation and clay beneath the surface to prevent overflow, an arrangement approved by Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB). As there are no physical barriers to keep wildlife away local aboriginals are concerned that the animals they traditionally hunt and trap are drinking water from the pond...
There's no upside to being right about the state of global warming whilst the deniers are having their way impeding action and legislation of any and all kinds. Yesterday the NYT's got around to covering one of the stories related to the consequences of global warming, of which there are many, that I've been talking about on my radio show for a couple of years and blogging about these last 8 or so months. They should be so proud! The thing is the stories and the peer reviewed science has been out there for all to see. It's no secret and it's the only way...
These news story links are about the crazy that has descended upon our American cousins. As Canadians we should never laugh too hard or get too smug. We are every bit as susceptible to political propaganda and lying narratives as they are. We are fortunate enough to have the public broadcaster on our side for now but take note, the culture over at the CBC has been changing markedly since Harper became Prime Minister. Just wait until they toss Fox News North into that mix and our discourse will soon become just as toxic if we let it. If you disagree may I direct you over to any chat board underneath a news story at the Globe and Mail or the CBC.
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I'm back after taking the weekend off from blogging here at NMPCanada. There's a bit of burnout from a week's worth of radio, research and blogging but mostly there's the repetitiveness of the narratives: Harper's an ideologue, Iggy stands up for nothing and our rights as citizens are being slowly but steadily eroded. Perhaps these narratives explain why the polls have essentially been stuck in place for the past two years. There's not that much difference between recent NANOS and the...
There are a host of things to be recalled and remembered on this day foremost among them is that we've learned nothing from a century filled with brutal and murderous wars. This week in Canada, during what should be a week of remembrances for past folly and the numerous sacrifices made by Canadian men in uniform, to the protests of no one, the Canadian government trotted out the likely extension of the mission in Afghanistan. In spite of the fact that no one can say what success in Afghanistan would look like and unlikelihood of whatever that was being achieved,...
November seems sometimes to be remiss of both holidays and happy days and so I would like to suggest we make Carl Sagan's birthday an international holiday! We could celebrate the sane and rational side of mankind for one day and perhaps remember what it is that brought to us an array of everyday wonders: Science.
There are a litany of great Carl Sagan quotes out there, but my own personal favourite would be, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
Go here for...
Of course the weekend's veterans protests were planned well in advance for Remembrance week giving the Tories ample time to prepare a response that wouldn't alienate the majority of Canadians. So with time on their side they responded well in advance so as to tamp down criticism of their treatment and the compensating of injured veterans. A bunch of promises have been made about flexibility and different types of payouts and that all will be made right so far as the compensation goes, but the...
On Friday Gerald Caplan eviscerated Michael Ignatieff over his incomprehensible stands on Bill C-300, that called for accountability and transparency to the activities of Canadian mining companies operating around the world, and Bill C-393 an initiative to provide inexpensive AIDS drugs to poor countries in Africa. Both were the kind of bills that traditional Liberals have supported in the past and would no doubt be proud to stand up for now but not our Iggy.
The mid-term US elections have come and gone and while the Republicans managed to take the House in what Obama called a "shellacking," they failed to take control of the Senate chamber. There was another massive sea-change that took place this election cycle that the media will not talk about at length and it's important. It's all about shadowy corporate money that was poured into advertising campaigns and turned what otherwise would have been an appropriate expression of dissatisfaction over what are very high unemployment numbers into a debacle so far as seats in the House are concerned. What concerns me most here is where all the money went, the likely effect it had on voters, and how the narrative coming out of Tuesday night would have otherwise been...
It's hard to know what the catalyst was for Canada's Minister for the Environment Jim Prentice, resigning on Thursday but speculating about it is irresistible. He's a man who was considered a likely heir to Stephen Harper and hence someone with a real shot at being Prime Minister of Canada. So why would he suddenly step down for a job in the private sector that would in all likelihood always be there for him? Is it possible that his recent decisions as Minister made him less likely to succeed Harper?
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On back to back days the federal Tories did the right thing on two issues that are likely much closer to the hearts of most progressives than to their own base. On Tuesday they vetoed the proposed Prosperity mining project because of adverse environmental effects. This is a project that the BC Liberals had already approved and so in vetoing it the |Conservative Party have prevented Fish Lake from being turned into a tailings dump. This decision has ended months of uncertainty and bickering over the $800-million project.
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Being a political junkie has its price: constant disappointment. I find it very difficult to reconcile our collective short-sightedness with what science teaches us about the universe and so I surf from site to site looking for solace occasionally. I generally start with science related sites: magazines, the numerous science blogs or the catalogue of spectacular pictures collected over at the Hubble site. Today I got lucky and came across this video entitled "Science Saved My Soul." It lifted me off my chair and put unspoken thoughts into words and images more...
Okay, I don't want to be seen as a piker here. Yesterday I was begging for Mr. Ignatieff to stand up for something and, oddly enough, today he did! Now it's a long laundry list of things he decided to stand up for so there's a danger that it may all get lost in the miasma of media translations and therein lies the problem he must solve if he is ever to govern.
It's not enough to stand up for principles -- it's a great place to start and all...
I like Keith Olbermann a lot. My only qualm is not with him but with the fact that he is generally preaching to the choir. There are false equivalencies aplenty in the MSM and one is that he's the left's version of some of the right wing's media personalities -- and that is patently false! He has no opposite number on the right. He may wave his arms and get apoplectic from time to time but he generally has cause and more importantly he's got his facts straight. Unlike those on the right if he does make a mistake he corrects it and apologizes. The following special comment from him is incisive and illustrative of the kinds of people running under the banner of the Republican party this election cycle. They may call themselves the Tea Party but they are just extremist right-...
You can certainly make the argument that Canada's Conservative Party more closely resembles the American Republican Party now more than at any time in the recent past. Tea Party North is not hyperbole considering the policies and kinds of spending the Harper government advocates. i.e. $10-$13 billion for more prisons when the crime rate is going down, more on the military even though there is no urgent need. In fact the planned spending of $16 billion on the F-35's is so indefensible that the Tories come up with the most ridiculous reasons imaginable. And they say things that don't even rise to the level of a schoolyard taunt, like...
One of the best things I did this year was show up at the Progressive's BBQ on the hill that was graciously hosted by Senator Elaine McCoy of Calgary, Alberta. What made it a great learning experience for me was that the people at the meet-up were far more experienced at blogging than me and old hands at watching the Liberal Party. I , for example, held out great hope that Iggy had learned a lot in is summer excursions across the country and would return better prepared to lead a political party than he had been in the past. He has always struck me as someone who should be the guy behind the guy and not the guy. Better suited to being a policy wonk than a party leader is what I'm trying to say, and still I held out hope...
The week has been pretty busy in non-Khadr related news. Alex Hundert is having his rights quashed and I can't for the life of me understand why the media and the public don't think it's a big deal. If they can do this to him they can do it to any of us.
Shortly after paying a $3...
I have to admit that the stories about Omar Khadr and the manner in which he was forced to plead guilty to a litany of transgressions so he could escape a life sentence in jail made me ill. I got over over it when I heard Peter Mansbridge last night mindlessly repeating what Khadr was admitting to in that kangaroo court military tribunal. No context, no questioning if any of it was true, and no mention of Khadr's lawyer's repeated words that what Khadr had signed on to was "just a piece of paper," and he would have "admitted to killing J.F.K. if it meant getting out of that hellhole!"
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Driving home from the radio show at 10 AM Monday morning I heard that Omar had pled guilty to the crimes the Americans had accused him of. I was hoping this would happen because it would signal that a plea deal had been reached and instead of a life sentence he would receive eight years or so based on the reports that have been in the media for the past week. I wasn't relieved or happy because as Khadr's lawyer had said this is not justice for the young man who has already spent a full third of his life unjustly incarcerated. I was sickened by his having been railroaded, by the apathy shown by not only the Canadian government but also by the Canadian public.
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Couldn't help notice that Hillary Clinton contacted Lawrence Cannon to discuss the status of Omar Khadr. Presumably this is about Canada taking him back at some point after a plea deal is struck. If the plea deal falls through and Canada does not repatriate Omar at some point then in all likelihood the kangaroo court military tribunal put together for the express purpose of finding him guilty will do just that and Khadr will receive the equivalent of a death sentence -- 50 years to life in an American prison.
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Another week has gone by and optimism is still in short supply. Friday's on the radio show are for reviewing the most important stories of the week (IMHO of course) and stories that for whatever reason I couldn't or didn't have time to get to and still continue to fly under the radar of the MSM. So in that spirit, let Friday links blogging begin!
The stories most likely to have a long term on all...
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"...
Down at the radio station I've made Thursdays my day to cover science, environmental and global warming news. I felt it was more effective to put it all together and make it all of a piece. Sadly today's stories all put together create an alarming picture of where we are headed.
Starting with this speech given by Maude Barlow, a former UN Senior Water Advisor, National Chairperson of the...
Hey there and here's quick roundup of the stories covered on yesterday morning's show that weren't about Omar Khadr.
Beginning with the continued obfuscation and lack of transparency on the Afghan detainee issue where almost four months after a special committee of MPs was created to examine 40,000 sensitive Afghan detainee documents, not a single page has been cleared for public release.
There's what I would call pretty good and interesting news out in Calgary, where a progressive Muslim candidate has been elected to the Mayor's office. The Globe and Mail...
This morning I had the pleasure of conducting an interview with Hilary Homes of Amnesty International to find out where the rumoured plea deal for Omar Khadr stands. Also to help recap for my listening audience how it is that a child plucked off the battlefield at the age of 15 could end up spending 8 years in military detention and then have to face a military tribunal, which explicitly forbids the invocation of the Geneva Conventions and where the outcome is pretty much predetermined. There's also the issue of the brutal interrogation techniques...
So I'm reading about the $1.3 billion dollars that were spent on the summit security and we all know how fabulously that went and what we got for our money. Armed, uniformed bullies conducting mass arrests and violating people's civil rights while the G-8 and G-20 delegates and officials had their photo-op pictures taken for deals that had been struck pro-forma (before they ever got here). I mean I can't think of a better way to spend that kind of money, can you? It's a great demonstration of the Conservatives bona fides as far as being fiscally conservative goes, and government officials were saying today that the costs for the G8 and G20 summits in June were a bargain at $1.3...
A huge surprise in a Parliamentary committee hearing today as a Conservative member was the first to break with the spirit of "Decorum Day" on the hill. All parties agreed in advance to support Equal Voice’s Decorum Day but agreements mean little to members of Canada's teaparty north.
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...
This is from my on-line blogging partner and regular Tuesday morning guest Rob -- you can check out more of his posts at out site nmpcanada.blogspot.com.
The Conservative government is preparing for a national debate on health care finance and reform. Which I imagine is code for so long medicare, welcome to Canada big US health insurance companies.
In case there is any doubt as to where our beloved Prime Minister good old Steven Harper stands on the issue, he was President of the National Citizens Coalition from 1998 to 2002. What is the National Citizens Coalition? According to Wikipedia.
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The documentary film about the interrogation of Omar Khadr, You Don't Like The Truth, is being screened in Montreal from October 29th 2010 at the Cinéma Parallèle de Montréal, on November 1 2010, 7:30pm at the Ciné-Club de Laval (Salle André-Mathieu) and in Toronto from October 29th 2010, at the Royal Cinema, 608 College Street. The documentary will also be screened to Canadian MP's by the Bloc Québécois, and Luc Côté one of the directors of the film, says he has been told by Khadr's lawyers that some of the documentary will be used during closing arguments at his trial if it comes to that. There have been reports of a possible plea deal but it has yet to be confirmed....
Vic Toews and provincial and territorial justice ministers got together and agreed to new general guidelines on Taser use after many provinces had already enacted similar rules. What they agreed upon is revealing so far as what has essentially been the unregulated use of this weapon that has seen 26 Canadians die after they were employed.
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I somehow managed to miss the news and video featuring "Officer Bubbles," the bullying caricature of a police officer, who did what he could to intimidate citizens during the G-8, G-20 summits. I have posted the video of his revelatory behaviour below. I don't really see how he can sue someone for cartoons as they fall under the category of satire and humour which makes it open season -- like this: How many soapy bubbles did it take Officer Bubbles to lose his mind and have an innocent citizen harassed and arrested? Answer: None. People with small penises don't need any excuses to throw their weight around.
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Hello there! Late to the blog because it was a long and busy day. I wanted to follow up on the Omar Khadr story with what news I could find before the day ended. You can go see the PM Harper's "principled" reaction to news of a possible plea bargain here. There' nothing new of course. No acknowledgement of the fact that he was in fact a child soldier when he picked up off a battlefield by the Americans at the age of 15. Just the comment "he's charged with very serious crimes," while never mentioning that the only real proof of these so-called...
Khurram Syed Sher, 28, who once auditioned for the Canadian Idol TV show and is now a London Ontario doctor who has been charged with conspiracy to facilitate terrorism has been granted bail. Does this mean he's not the dangerous terrorist he was first described as?
On the subject of possible trumped up charges comes a story that makes me question what in Hades has happened to our country? Alex Hundert remains in jail after his Sept 17, 2010, re-arrest for refusing to sign what he deemed to be...
On a day when Stephen Harper tries to claim the mantle of high-minded "principles" in Canada's international engagements as an excuse for losing his bid for a Canadian seat on the UN Security Council -- something he called his highest priority -- a story about a possible plea deal for Omar Khadr surfaces. Is it possible that the representatives of other nations are sickened like I am by Harper's cruel handling of this case. Do they believe as I do that the prosecution and torture of a 15 year old child is inhumane, a war-crime, as well as a ready example of...
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...
It boggles the mind how climate science deniers can sleep at night. I find myself wondering do they have children? Do they want grandchildren? Are they heartless, mindless whores? Do they beat their wives? I can understand why the fossil fuel companies are in there fighting but not the right-wingers who blindly support them selectively choosing the bits of science they're going to believe (peer reviewed or not) as long as it support what they already believe.
Wednesdays down at the radio show once the Canadian headlines are all covered are now officially for the conflicts taking place around the globe so I ask you, who could resist using that title at least once? Certainly not me.
In Canada an anti-war ad made by the Federation des femmes du Quebec was edited to appease military parents who were upset that the ad referred to the soldiers as "cannon fodder." It looks like...
Decided that for the radio show I'd make Tuesdays the day to chronicle the goings on in American hate-radio and tea party/John Bircher madness. A couple of stories from last week while I was off seemed to be emblematic of the current state of divisiveness in American politics.
One happened in Obion County Tennessee the house of the Cranicks caught fire and they fled their home, their neighbors alerted the county’s firefighters, who soon arrived at the scene. Yet when the firefighters arrived, they refused to put out the fire, saying that the family failed to pay the annual subscription fee to the fire department. Because the county’s fire services for rural residences is based on...
Back from a much needed week's vacation and ready to pick up where I left off. I would have posted the occasional video or something but was unable to as my internet service provider -- rhymes with trucking hell -- was down and continues to give me fits.
Speaking of fits, no doubt Stephen Harper is having one today as...
Environmental issues as they unfold south of the border are important here in Canada as the Tories have tied what it is they do to American actions -- anything else they argue would put Canadian business at a disadvantage. A great excuse to avoid the difficulties involved in real leadership.
In California there is a campaign being run by big oil and their astroturfing organizations for the passage of a bill called proposition 23. It was placed on the ballot by Texas oil companies. The proposition...
Still having internet issues here which are supposed to be resolved by tomorrow at which point regular blogging will resume. In the meantime I hope the weekend's going your way -- please pass this story on to your friends.
On Monday September the 27th, the Washington Post published the first of three excerpts from Bob Woodward's new book Obama's Wars. There was some notice but hardly any genuine consternation over what should be alarming to believers in representative democracy -- especially as it concerns our American cousins.
I have been openly critical of Obama's Afghanistan war strategy on my radio show. I saw it as a continuation of the previous administration's...
Been having internet issues and that has kept me from blogging regularly, so I'm here to play catch-up with the links from the last couple of days. Michael Ignatieff as been playing catch-up all year long and can't figure out why he's not gaining traction. Maybe someone should tell him that his embrace of the middle of the road is uninspiring. The Liberals had changed their stance on more assistance for those on unemployment, the EI bill -- an issue Iggy was ready to go to the polls for just last year. ...
Canadian stories I've covered on my radio show the past three programs.
Liberal MP Marc Garneau introduced a motion in the House of Commons Tuesday calling on the federal government to reinstate the mandatory long-form census, despite continuing insistence by the Conservatives that it is intrusive and unnecessary. Unsurprisingly the Conservatives pull out the scary, scary word "coalition," as they try to beat back the momentum of the opposition in reinstating the long-form census. "Scary stuff!"
When is a 15 year old boy not a 15 year old boy? This one's easy! When he's Omar Khadr. Canada's Federal Court of Appeal has refused to hear his case immediately effectively handing the Harper government a win in its fight against Omar Khadr. Have a look at the timeline of Khadr's capture, imprisonment and interrogation as a reminder of some of the things wrong with this prosecution:
Jim Prentice, Canada's Environment Minister is busy lowering expectations that countries will come out of the Cancun UN climate talks with a deal. By all appearances the Cancun conference will end much as Copenhagen did, with more than 190 countries putting off a binding climate deal. It's a shameful state of affairs when talks are stalled and that is considered to be progress from last week's admission by a top U.S. climate official that the negotiations leading up to Cancun are going backwards.
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And we're back! Been feeling burnt out so took time off from blogging and going to take a week off from the radio show -- probably next. Still wanted to catch up with all the news though, so picking up where I left off with some pretty bad economic numbers from south of the border:
News reports say that in 2009 the poverty rate in the U.S. “skyrocketed” to 43.6 million -- up from 39.8 million in 2008, which is the largest year-to-year increase, and the highest number since statistics have been recorded -- putting the poverty rate for 2009 at 14...
Hello and welcome back to the NM&P blog! Feeling under the weather today so I'll use it as an excuse to catch up on this week's links that didn't get posted including the stories I had set out to talk about today. Most of those will be in Part the second so come back to check them out. Right now I want to begin posting about a surprising first week of Parliament and an invigorated oppositon.
This has been a good start to the kickoff of Parliament. The opposition parties have not been cowed by the increasingly threatening language coming from the right -- which of itself is a small victory. Mr. Harper's calls of "I'm going to make you pay for this come next election," have the sound of a school-boy's idle plaint and seem a bit flatulent. Especially...
As a Canuck, it`s an odd experience to watch Stephen Harper operate using a game plan lifted from the playbook of one of the more discredited politicians of our time: George W. Bush Jr. A man who has been vilified for his emptying of the U.S. treasury, starting two morale sapping wars, spying on Americans, outing a CIA agent, staining his country`s reputation by sanctioning rendition and torture, but the worst thing he may have done is to divide his nation into two separate camps both angry and distrustful of each other. A state of affairs that sadly exists to this day. Seems Harper was paying attention it seems and is seeking to emulate Bush in every manner possible -- I mean how else can you interpret his actions?
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Earlier this week I was pointed to a particularly egregious BBC article by Richard Black on the extent of this year's Arctic sea ice melt. As Black looks for every description to describe why the phenomenon is happening other than the "controversial" theory of global warming he also manages to never mention CO2 emissions; the 30 billion tonnes of CO2 humankind pumps into the atmosphere yearly as perhaps being one of the reasons. He also mischaracterizes the science citing an outdated prediction about when the Arctic will be free of summer ice so as to push a narrative that can only be described as one that has climate scientists forwarding exaggerated claims. So no need to worry or take action...
Today`s show featured a pair of interviews the first with David Scott of the Conseil Jeunesse de Montreal-- Its a non-partisan think-tank composed of 15 young Montrealers of all stripes, shapes, and sizes that volunteer their time to advise the Mairie and Executive Committee on all things youth (12 to 30). If you would like know more about them or volunteer to assist them you can find them on-line (in French) at http://www.cjmtl.com.
They are holding public consultations in and around Montreal over the next month and want input from young Montrealers. Their schedule is as follows:
Tuesday September 28, 2010; 19h; Cegep du Vieux-Montreal.
Wednesday October 6, 2010; 19h;...
The leaves are starting to turn, the kids are back at school and the sound of caterwauling can be heard coming from Canada's Parliament so it must be autumn in the Great White North. This session of Parliament seems to be weighted with importance as there is a growing sense that within a year an election will be called either by the opposition or the minority government depending on who gets the upper hand in the polls the quickest.
There have been...
From the great people at Democracy Now: John LeCarré reading an exerpt from his much quoted 2003 essay on the then looming Iraq war:
Going to do this as fast as possible without a narrative if you don't mind.
Beginning with Harper's dreams of one day scrapping the long-gun registry -- it really doesn't take much to make a con happy. All you have to do is support, believe and act on his ideology and all is well. They're hoping to keep playing this...
We are being lied to every day by not only the corporations that are polluting and destroying the very eco-systems upon which we rely for our survival but by the governments we have elected who spend their time and energies protecting them. Here in Canada we have the tarsands with their attendant tailings ponds which are a massive ecological disaster, an inefficient way to get oil...
The Arctic is the one place no one 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 Tories are facing at an embarrassing 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...
Covering the very unsexy Afghanistan war today on my radio program I began by reporting what Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance said on Monday night on his return to Kandahar where he was in command. “Although we’ve been in Afghanistan for a long time, and in the south since 2006, we really did not have the forces necessary to defeat the enemy using counterinsurgency tactics at the time.” But that's all changed now with Obama's surge in troops for Afghanistan and now the allies do have what’s needed for “enduring progress.”
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Looking for adjectives to describe what the American war machine has wrought in Iraq is only difficult in the sense that there are so many of them. Even the word debacle seems to understate it -- for the Iraqis it is a complete disaster and the current state of affairs is far worse than was ever visited upon them by their former dictator.
There was a report yesterday that 1...
"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...
Today's radio show started with the Amnesty International report about continuing abuse and torture in Iraqi prisons where as as many as 30,000 are reportedly being held without charge or trial - the 59-page report criticizes American troops for handing over detainees to a system marred by...
For those who aren't aware, and part of what I do is post the links to all the stories I cover on my show at my radio show blog. It's a constant battle to keep up and blog here at NMPCanada as well but I do enjoy the challenge and if I can provide a one-stop fits all for news links I'm happy to do it. Of late I've gotten away from that and I thought today would be a good day to include that once again as part of the overall format here.
There's a mantle that the Liberals have always claimed for themselves: Canada's natural governing party, and who wouldn't want to? They governed for 69 years during the 20th century and rightfully earned bragging rights. Recently there were some arguing that the Tories could claim that title for themselves if they governed (ruled) from the center -- but with one of the founding members of the former Alliance Party running the show that was surely a pipe-dream. Counter-intuitively I guess, I've always believed that like in Britain where that honour belongs to Labour, in Canada it probably could with the right leader, just as...
On Friday I wandered over to Progressive Bloggers after a long week of radio and blogging and saw all kinds of negative assessments of Iggy's summertime tour across Canada and found myself disappointed, but not entirely in disagreement with what was being said about the Liberal leader. Yep, he absolutely has had an abysmal first eighteen months as leader of his party. Indeed, he has missed opportunity after opportunity, especially this past spring to pin down the Prime Minister for being an ideological hack who's on the opposite side of Canadians on most issues of import. Yes, Michael Ignatieff is a very centrist and rather conservative man -- not really in the mold of past Liberal leaders at all. And finally, it probably was a mistake to just anoint him leader...
Gotta' have some sauce for your week and since I couldn't get here on the weekend I thought I'd pile on an extra big plate of burgers and fries and some kind of pie links and vids for your news ingesting pleasure. Most importantly it was Labour Day so let's beg the question, "What have unions ever done for us?"
Really wanted to send out good wishes and happy Labour Day thoughts to all who come by and hope for a time when labour won't be marginalized and the value of unions...
Seriously! To quote Stephen Harper, "Eeeeek! Beware the coalition!"
After a long summer of his party putting their foot in it at every turn: disregarding how Canadians feel about their institutions, pretending to be for austerity while spending $16 billion dollars on a sole-sourced contract for fighter jets, $1 billion for a weekend's worth of security that gave Canada a black-eye around...
Getting right to the business of catching up on the media narratives, as most know Obama declared the end of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," Tuesday night and the beginning of "Operation New Dawn." It is exactly the kind of Orwellian hooey that it reads like. There are as noted everywhere even the MSM 50,000 combat ready troops being left behind, but not being reported as often are the bases that still remain occupied by American forces in the desert and the 7,000 independent contractors ( re: modern-day mercenaries) they are hiring to leave behind at five different bases . Here's a report from Democracy Now on those bases:
...I promised on this morning's show that I'd post the stories relating to marijuana research done in Spain back in 2000 -- so here it is with all the related issues and links. I hope the material provided is enlightening.
This is going to be a hard post to write without cracking endless jokes about the effects of marijuana on one's general well-being... and memory. It's likely that a lot of the people reading this have heard anecdotal ...
Hello there to whoever it is that pops in to pick up the links. I've been feeling burnt out from a combination of what seems like endless research and numerous blog posts so I took a few days off. Feel free to leave a note.
It's hard to keep up with all the stupid lately as our own government has decided that the GWB jr. model for running the country is the way to go. In the latest example fear-mongering, a fact free explanation for policy that the majority of the country disagrees came from Lawrie McFarlane, former deputy health minister from B.C., who said Canadians lie on the census. He cited the...
The tribulations of Omar Khadr get lost in the shuffle all the time -- in fact the shuffle has been going on for almost eight years now and still he's in Guantanamo. As an issue this won't crop up again until his trial resumes in three weeks and maybe that's symptomatic of what's wrong with our media and our politics. If an issue isn't directly in our faces as a result of a recent media report or focus there's a tendency for that issue to be ignored or forgotten until the MSM deems it time to report on it again.
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The amazing thing about Stephen's photo-op in the Arctic is that not one of the reporters there was willing to ask him a tough question. Nothing but softballs so he can forward his preferred narrative about "all" that he's done and is willing to do to help transform Canada's North. It'd be brilliant if it were true. The bulk of his promises were delayed , and still won't be completed until 2015, or 2017, which is long past the time to establish an unmistakable and definable presence in the North so as to support Canada's claims to our sovereignty over that region (the UN is expected to rule on all claims by 2013). Not a single question about why he...
Hello, and thanks for showing up. Having a tough time keeping up with everything but will try to get it done tonight.
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...
And we're back! Seventeen minutes past the big hour and we've got lots of stories but rapidly running out of time here tonight.
Starting with a story that should be getting way more ink, Pakistani government officials admitted that they deliberately sabotaged secret peace talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban because they resented being excluded from those talks. And in some news from the middle-east that actually might be called good news, turns out the prospect of an alliance between the Iraqiya and Iraqi National Alliance (INA) blocs and the formation of a coalition...
From the moment Michael Ignatieff became leader of the Liberal Party, the Conservatives went on the attack and pinned a host of labels on him. Not being a politician by trade Ignatieff was slow to fight back. Probably thinking the charges were so ridiculous that who would pay any attention? Sadly that's not how politics, even in the great polite North, works these days. So Michael has had to re-introduce himself to the Canadian public this summer, and has done a creditable job of it.
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Starting with a completely great story from the Calgary Herald about ...Calgary's Motive Industries, which announced it would introduce an electric car whose bio-composite body is made from hemp.
The prototype of the four-passenger, zero-emission vehicle, known as the Kestrel, is to be unveiled at an electric mobility trade show in Vancouver in September and would be the first of its kind in Canada (my brother has been telling me about this possibility for some time now).
Another good news story from out west is that five years after a huge caustic soda spill, the Cheakamus river teems...
Iggy's cross Canada tour rolled into British Columbia this weekend and while the results are not spectacular one gets the sense from various newspaper reports out that way, that he is making headway and some converts. It helps of course to have the ideologically driven Tories constantly putting their foot in it seemingly every day of the summer. Liberals traditionally trail New Democrats and Conservatives in B.C. But while Grits remain in third place on the West...
The Tories have been making noise for five years now about how they're going to defend the Canada's Arctic sovereignty and establish a genuine and indisputable presence there but have so far done very little beyond those promises. To quote Stephen Harper, "You don't defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns. You need forces on the ground, ships in the sea, and proper surveillance." Indeed.
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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...
I awoke this morning to charges that Julian Assange (terrific profile from the BBC) was wanted for rape in Sweden. Considering the outright furor of the Americans over the leaking of 70,000 documents relating to the war in Afghanistan and the promised release of 15,000 more, I had my doubts as to the veracity of the complaints.
The Pentagon has recently demanded WikiLeaks immediately erase the huge cache of secret US military files about the Afghan war it has posted online and hand...
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...
At the end of each morning's radio show there is always at least one story that sticks with me -- one I covered that gets into my psyche and makes me wonder where the hell we are headed. This morning it was reviewing the story of Omar Khadr who is currently being tried by a US military commission. He is accused of throwing a grenade and killing a US soldier while under attack by US forces in Afghanistan. The fact that Harper has done nothing to protect the rights of a boy that was snatched off the battlefield at the age of 15 sickens and disheartens me. I know he'd do the same for any of us: nothing!
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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...
You know things are not going Stephen Harper's way when Canada's so-called national newspaper, the reasonably conservative Globe and Mail, compiles what they call a Tory hit list. They even do him the favour of leaving out the smearing of Richard Colvin and still things look bad. It's the kind of thing that gives the impression he's behaving like a tin-plated dictator from some 3rd rate banana republic -- and he is.
It's gotten so bad for PM Harper that he actually spoke to the press...
I'm not particularly happy about the impending arrival of Fox News North, but whatever the market will bear is alright with me. Now it seems 2011 is not nearly soon enough for Péladueau's project and PM Harper will try and hasten its' arrival by dumping the head of the CRTC.
I've been looking around...
Hey there, and thanks for showing up! Just wanted to pop back in and post the rest of the links to the days' stories. No narratives just the links, okay?
Feel free to drop me a note from time to time - you could tell me what kind of stories you'd like to see/hear more of and what kind you could do without.
The Gulf spill doesn't get as much coverage as it should in the media so you have to go digging to find out what's been happening there of late. For starters, the Obama administration announced Monday that it is no longer fast-tracking offshore drilling projects in deep water by exempting them from detailed environmental review.
Two weeks ago, as federal...
I think that I've uncovered a plot by Canada's Tories to undo the summer silly season and make sure we're all angry, unhappy and sleep deprived by the time the next session of Parliament rolls around.
How else can you explain the billion dollar boondoggle that was the bill for a single weekend's security for the G8 and G20 summits, the still...
Something funny and light-hearted from the National Lampoon people on a very serious subject:
As I watch and listen to the endless stream of dog-whistles and demagoguery from the right about people of colour, immigrants and the NYC mosque, I vaguely remember the image I had in my mind's eye for how the 21st century was going to look and it didn't include petty hatred and racism. In fact I was kind of hoping people would get around to the noticing that race was a...
I'm pretty happy to see the MSM covering the changing climate this week the way it should have been covered these last few years. I'm afraid the so-called tipping points are long past but there's always hope. It might be a lot more difficult to be glib or optimistic if I were in Moscow where toxic smoke has now enveloped a rain-soaked Moscow and doctors have warned that this summer's heat wave could drive more people to alcohol and suicide. Or in Pakistan where the...
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...
The MSM has been the lap dog of corporate interests for the first decade of this new century. They have deliberately muddied the waters over the issue of ACC (anthropogenic climate change) to the point where most in the west do not believe the changes in the climate have been caused by human activity...
Good to be back in the land of peace, order and good government. Ah well, you can't have everything, right? Still, a week on the shores of Maine serves as a great refresher but it was hard not to notice the struggle they are having with their democracy. Fights over long settled amendments to the constitution,...
Until next year at least, there will be no summer silly season. I'm not entirely sure as to the real reason why. I'll speculate that the Tories were hoping to make some hay over the summer months and possibly spring an election on their political foes, who all winter and spring long could get...
The outrages are so many and really horrible things disappear down the memory hole so fast I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't just repost stories that I thought were important in the first place. Sadly, there's an unending stream of effluvia coming from the media, the corporate whores and the American right-wing (some of the players can wear all three hats) and that makes it very difficult to do so. But seeing as how I'm going on vacation next week and it's hugely important for me to do some research (I'm trying to write a book), I'm going to have my partner in crime repost the most important stories that we've talked about here that have not received sufficient attention from the MSM. I will check in once or twice, so feel free to leave me a note.
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I hope no one minds the intermittent blogging of late. The heat, work, preparing to get away and research for what I hope will be my first book are keeping me busy. But enough about me.
Let's talk about someone who has learned how to cope with Conservative spin and fear-mongering and even fire back a few good shots of his own. I'm of course talking about Bob Rae. Yesterday he joined the chorus of those criticizing Stockwell Day and his defense of spending billions of dollars on new prisons when the crime rate appears to be declining.
He also had something to say about scrapping of the compulsory long-form census which he says...
Hello there! Preparing Tuesday's radio show and busily digging for Canadian news. Omar Khadr's lawyer is trying to halt the military tribunal and has filed an emergency petition to halt the upcoming trial to be held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 10. Toronto-born Khadr, now 23, has been held at the military prison since he was captured in 2002, at the age of 15, during a firefight in Afghanistan with U.S. soldiers. He faces five charges in connection with the incident, the most serious being murder of a U.S. special forces soldier.
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Had to take a couple of days off. Between the radio show and the blogging I got a bit burnt. Not so's you'd notice just enough for me to. I'm going on vacation next week and will spend the entire week doing research of a different kind. This morning's radio show was a mixed bag beginning with the hate-spewing monsters of talk radio in the US. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
When discussing the crazy propaganda the aforementioned hate-meisters spew, what's important to remember is no matter how crazy or untrue it may sound to you, it's effective if it's heard often enough and it will be believed....
Just a little commercial break so I could recharge a bit. Have to admit that the nature of the news stories I've been talking and writing about this summer have taken a weird toll. If you've also checked out the other blog, you'll know that the news from south of the border has been fueled by hatred and race-baiting and stupidity. Yet the MSM seems oblivious, reporting on stories without context, ignoring the incendiary speech from the right only mentioning it in when they try to draw false parallels to speech on the left. Thing is, there are no equivalencies on the left. There are none on the left who call for the bludgeoning or poisoning of the...
Well, another beautiful day here in Canada's happiest city. I've got a few friends and acquaintances who are going to argue with this unlikely assertion but I have to admit I like the idea - why would the people at Lonely Planet make such a thing up? There must be some truth to it. Montreal, by the by, was second worldwide to a place that...
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.
One of my problems with the blogging thing is I've always looked at things from the perspective of the big picture -- macro. In doing so I often allow the minutiae to escape me. It's why I don't do short sharp posts, for the most part, like the blogs I love to read do. I'm always trying to fit everything into the bigger picture and for the last 19 months I have to admit the big picture has been scaring the crap out of me.
There are...
I'm clearly running out of ideas for titles. Still, any excuse to post a Rolling Stones tune works for me:
It's very much as if parliament never went on vacation here in Canada. The Tories are still attacking and doing their best to smear Iggy who is having none of it. He seems to have a learned a thing or two in the past year. The Conservatives sent out a missive declaring Liberal, Jennifer...
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...
I Wanted to make sure anyone who dropped by had the details on the controversy manufactured by a right-wing creep with the help of the right-wing media that led to the firing of Shirley Sherrod. Rachel has the details below:
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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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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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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...
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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I'll admit I'm a fan of Krugman's writing and he does have that Nobel prize prize in economics which suggests to me he's often more right than wrong, unlike a long list of Austrian economists and those who follow their lead, who all love the shredding of safety nets and abhor deficits - no matter the cost.
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Katia Moskvitch the science reporter for the BBC reports that the captain, Yevgenii Chernyaev, of one of two Russian-built submersibles built to go down to depths of 6,000 metres, has said his vessel, the Mir-2 would be able to cap the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. "Of the four vessels in the world that can go down to 6,000m - the Mirs, French Nautile and Japanese Shinkai. The Mirs are known to be the best," the captain said.
Well, today's show got under way with a dull thud. Didn't happen really. Got to the station, the computer wasn't working, didn't have a plan B so I tried cancel my interview with our the always interesting William Ray - former member of the PPCLI (Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry). I had materials pertinent to our discussion and I thought it best to do it another day. But he showed up early and so we went ahead anyhow with what I believe to be an informative radio show and managed to make that link between the foot-dragging by bureuacrats at Somalia Inquiry and its' sudden conclusion and Stephen Harper's stonewalling on the Afghan detainee issue.
For a proper primer for ...
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 look forward to a time when "Eat the rich," is no longer a bit of graffiti scrawled on a wall but a menu oingption. 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...
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...
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers has a story about a Christian school science textbook published by Bob Jones University that on the subject of electricity reads as follows: Electricity is a mystery. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it. We can see hear and feel only what electricity does. We know that it makes light bulbs shine and irons heat up and telephones ring. But we cannot say what electricity itself is like.
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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 a...
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.
...
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.
...
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,...
Since everyone seems to give the overseas wars short shrift, I start there.
General McChrystal seems to be stalling for time so that coming offensive in Kandahar will be extra awesome - because war always is. An attack so brutish that the Taliban doesn't claim credit, but then they're...
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.
...
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 queasy feeling. One...
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:
...
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...
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...
"Aaaaand were back! You're listening to CJLO, 1690 on that AM radio dial - Concordia's Underground Radio! Here's the links to the stories we featured recently on New Media and Politics and others that are happeing in real time:
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...
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 the beginning of the Taliban summer offensive. At some point in the recent past wasn't it...
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 Base suggests that things not on track there either.
A fascinating BBC interview about the ways in which NATO is "divided" over Russia.
The five UN Security Council members have recently agreed to sign on for...
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 response to the spill to forego health concerns even while some are complaining of ...bad headaches, hacking coughs, stuffy sinuses, sore throats, and other symptoms. The outcry promises to get louder as the oil begins to roll into shore and the...
Life got busy and I stubbed my toes... repeatedly but here's some of the links to news of note:
More news continues to pour 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 ...
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.
...
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 and the coral...
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, Pte. Kevin McKay, 24,...
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...
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...
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...
Have been away for a couple of days and not able to make more than the occasional post. Was back in Montreal and on the radio today.
Here's some of the important stories going on in Canada beginning with the deadline on the Afghan detainee document handover being extended until this Friday. It should be noted a failure means the Conservatives will be in contempt of Parliment and, if the opposition has the stomach, it could trigger a snap election. And it's pretty much agreed by those in the know that the government could have done much more to protect the detainees from...
Daily links time again. Been gone for a couple of days and not doing the radio show so the feature was skipped. There were still posts and timely ones too. The oil spill in the Gulf is getting some of the front page treatment it deserves, at least from McClatchy, where they beg the question, "What Happens If We Can't Stop It?"
...
So reading yesterday's EKOS poll on how Canadians feel about their political parties it's hard not to get a bit despondent as a Canadian progressive. Of course if I was a tory I wouldn't feel that great about things as they stand either. This result is the best they can hope for.
There aren't now nor will there likely be in the near future a plurality of...
Not going to post a lot here today but I wanted to post what I thought was massively important to the, where are we now and how did we get here, dicussion on civics.
To know me or listen to my radio show is to hear me occasionally joke that we're all living in the age of stupid. Of course like a lot of jokes I've told over the years there's some truth in it... IMHO that is. I won't give you the litany about a whole generation not being aware of even the recent past, let alone the important...
Hey! Back like always, even if a little late with the links to the stories on today's show.
One of the things that kept me from posting earlier was going to see 'Iron Man 2,' with my 14 year old boy. The movie was great fun! It's not Shakespeare (that would actually have been disappointing), but certainly provides terrific escapist entertainment with extremely talented actors playing in all the key roles. I recommend it for fans of the genre.
Back late for the daily post of links both from the stories I covered on my radio show and just important things being ignored by the various asshats in the MSM.
...
Hello, and we're back! It'ss 16 minutes past the big hour here at NM&P and we'd like to remind you that these stories can also be found here and here. Also as of next week we'll be posting the stories in advance of the program rather than after. Hope you liked this morning's show. Seemed pretty chock full of news the msm avoids so that's all I have to go on. Tell me what you think anytime at oldpunk@cjlo.com!
Wanted to come back last night and toss in a post about the lowlife tory Senator Nancy Ruth...
I post here every day for the integrity of my show. Unlike some others on AM radio, on both sides of the border, I want proofs of the stories I report on and I want my listeners to have those proofs too. It's not always as simple as it sounds as a lot of wire stories get passed around and repeated without double-checking. That's what makes the new media superior to the MSM. You can source it yourself.
Some of these stories got covered on my radio show and some I just didn't have time to get to. So many issues, so many outrages, so little common sense.
his story about the Tory Senator telling people who disagreed with gov't. policy on maternal healthcare for women in developing countries to...
Hey! Back for more. No tech problems today so that means the show was awesome! It was fun to do as always. I've posted David Suzukki's, Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez over at my other bog so you can watch and understand how the fallout from the oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico will probably play out for BP. They like Exxon, have a whole flotilla of lawyers they will send out to screw everyone. Remember, you're on that list! When you're paying higher prices for your fish this summer, that'll be on BP. There'll be be other costs too and we'll foot them.
The show began with Bill Moyer's and his...
Hey there! Late to the dance. Life gets in the way of getting the show blogged most days and most days blogging these stories gets in the way of life. As always, there's more over at the new blogs Rob and I have got going.
Omar Khadr facing a kangaroo court. Just to emphasize the kangaroo court aspect of this story,...
In case anyone checks in I've got a couple of links to keep you busy and informed about the unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The latest estimates are that over a million gallons a day are spilling into the Gulf - considerably more than BP's original estimate of 42,000 gallons. That and other oil spill related issues are covered here, including how BP could have prevented this with something called an acoustic switch which would have cost them $500,000.
Remember this is happening in a year where they are reporting record profits for the 1st quarter and...
Even on a Friday when the news is pretty tough to read there's always a horizon to look forward to and you can look to it and imagine that things can and will get better. It's not cock-eyed optimism rising above layers of cynicism but rather survival instincts kicking in. There's gotta' be a horizon to look forward to. A place where people act in the interests of the greater good. Where neighbors know each other and help out when things get rough. There will be some hard times ahead of us collectively but eventually our survival instincts will kick in (following a major crisis no doubt) and we'll start building and working and moving towards that brighter horizon once again. Until then though,...
The end of the week is close and it's been fun being back after a week off. Although some of the stories have made me pretty angry. My therapist says I've been doing a good job laughing it off. (I pay him to listen)
Starting with Stephen Harper and the tories tories today and we beggerd the question, asses or idealogues? Assalogues was the right answer. Following up on the story of refusing to fund...
Back again and it felt like a pretty good and informative show. As always didn't get to it all, which is kind of good. I get nervous as the number of stories starts to lessen towards the show's end and am not big on repeating stories. If you missed the story or most of the show 'cause you're in and out of the car well, the stories are blogged here at CJLO and here and here and there's some funny stuff here!
Okay, beginning with a story I did mention twice today, Peter Milliken, Speaker of ther House, rules Stephen Harper is PM, not king and...
Blogging the morning's stories a bit late here as there was all kinds of reading I had to catch up on. Day 2 after being off for a week and it was good for me in many ways. Mostly, the reinjection of passsion into how I feel about some of these issues particularly the environmental ones. It's pretty easy to get discouraged by the lack of real movement on the issue but you can't let it! That's how the bastards plan to win!
5,000 retards show up for a teabaggers rally and wall to wall MSM coverage and yet 100,000 concerned citizens show up to rally for action on Climate Change and nothing! I'm sure you...
Welcome back to the few who check this page.
For those of you who wish to visit my on-line blog, go here. I'll continue to post the links to the stories I covered on the morning show but I will no longer post links to the stories I couldn't get to. You'll find those at either the above link or at the my site for all news Canadian.
Please check out the BBC report from reporter Simon Reeve on the garbage dump in the Pacific. The oil rig spill in the Gulf of Mexico which could threaten the Louisiana coastline. And in some positive news...
Hello and welcome back! This morning's show was as much fun as I've ever had doing the program. I had this idea some time ago to create for the listener a do-it-yourself morning news broadcast using the new medias available to one and all on the intertubes. Aside from the odd technical glitch it went extremely well and hopefully was as fun for the listener as it was for me. Today's blogging will include those media links as well as to all the important stories of the day I couldn't get to. Change in not good, it's awesome!
Canadian News
Beginning with The Canadian military "subcontracted torture" to the Afghan security service and shot an unarmed 17-year-old man in the back of the head, alleges an Afghan-Canadian who worked as an interpreter for the...
Welcome back! The radio show this AM featured only a couple of stories as we spent hour 2 interviewing William Ray discussing increased American influence in the Canadian Armed Forces as well as the Afghan detainee issue. Here's links to the stories we did cover as well as those we wanted to.. that counts right?
Canadian News
On the Afghan detainee issue, Forces investigator says, "Nothing to see here! Everybody move along..." http://bit.ly/93umyX Diplomat Richard Colvin, begs to differ http://bit.ly/d9aD35 But he's being hamstrung by the torries in an unconscionable manner - even the conservative Globe and Mail describes it as being Kafka-like...
Ah, sweet sunny Tuesdays, when it feels like the week might just fly by! Tonight you can come see me at Grumpy's doing a spot and tomorrow when the weather hits 15 I recommend you hit an outdoor café and raise a toast to the coming summer. I'm also blogging over here http://newmediaandpolitics.blogspot.com/ where I'll be posting stories that I don't or can't do on the radio.
Canadian News
Starting with protests against Charest's very unpopular Quebec budget which includes user fees http://bit.ly/bSBYfF There's lots of studies on the myth that user fees help prevent abuse including this one http://bit.ly/ctsW7S From...
Hey there, and welcome back! Hope the weekend and life were kind to you.
Canadian News
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your Government when it deserves it"...Mark Twain..
So, Canada's torries and military brass knew what was happening to Afghan detainees there can be no doubt http://bit.ly/dk2pbW Bondage, beatings and a few questions from the governor http://bit.ly/aqDBVm And yet Canadian military's top investigator says he was unaware of a Federal Court ruling that found there were "real and serious...
Hey there and sorry for getting here so late today. Have to do this quickly and run off to do some stand-up. It's been a while and I have rust to shake off.
Today was supposed to be more humorous than it ended up being. My guest, comedian Peter Radomski, was there to help me go over the week during the shows' last hour and help me find the funny but there really wasn't a lot of funny in the Iraq video released this week by the Wikileaks people but we did have some fun at the expense of the incredibly racist Pat Buchanan http://bit.ly/cPpWC7 who was defending slavery this week on MSNBC. (You'll find the link to the Wikileaks video on a previous post entitled Chumpsday Blogging)
Earlier in the program before Peter...
Hey there, and welcome back!
Did a very wonky but interesting science story today that asks if our universe is located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe? Hence the title of today's posting. Go check it out and be amazed http://bit.ly/9p7gZm When I need good news or just a respite from bad news I generally head over to the many science sites that are on-line and free and do a little reading. I found this piece here http://www.sciencedaily.com/ at one of those terrific places.
On to Canadian news of note, beginning with our PM trying to rip Hamid Karzai a "new one" five days after it...
Hello there, and thanks for showing up. I promise to make it worth your while.
Starting with Canadian news - not that there's much of it but this 1st story is significant in that reporters are being banned from hearings on Afghan detainees http://bit.ly/9CVwve To protect Stephen Harper and the torries of course. Canadians finding all 3 parties uninspiring http://bit.ly/9OLlgg not surprising when it's hard to name what each party stands for. A roundup of opinion on latest Quebec budget http://bit.ly/bzVIeI
This is the very disturbing video of American soldiers murdering Iraqi civillians and behaving like sociopaths. Parts of the video have been played by...
And we're back after the long weekend with stories I talked about on-air today and the stories I didn't have time for so you can stay informed. Tell your friends!
Starting with Lawrence Cannon's trip to the Arctic in an attempt to assert Canadian soveriegnty http://bit.ly/9RSyFO
Ticking time bomb sitting atop the Great Barrier reef put there by the Chinese gov't company COSCO http://bit.ly/bb5E8u And since there's a liklihood that an oil spill will happen in the Arctic with increased exploration and production the Cdn. gov't has sent oil spill kits to the Arctic http://bit.ly/b7A5mB That makes it all...
this must be Bedlam!
Indeed it is as we play catch-up once again. Want to note that my interview with Gotta Laff as she prefers to be known in the blogosphere, of The Political Carnival http://www.thepoliticalcarnival.net/ will be aired tomorrow between 8:30 and 9:00 AM - Tune for fun innformative talk with one of the internet's better known bloggers! Truly a great interview with a very talented and funny person.
Like our recent shows of late, let's beging with all things Canuckistani: There's a definite movement afoot to get our taxes raised http://bit.ly/bRyjF9 And starting right here in Quebec, yesterday's Liberal budget does just that ...
Okay, catch-up blogging once again and right as we are mid-stream in giving the show a bit of a make-over. Let us know what you think of the change in tone. Truth is I could no longer afford to invest myself in the stories I cover; have to admit I take a lot of it personally. So onwards and upwards with more humor, more Canadian news (you have no idea how hard that is!) and a more neutral stance on all the crazy from south of the border.
Getting to the stories I covered on Friday and today, here are the links: Starting with Eric Cantor's idiotic claim that Democrats were exploiting the threats they'd received from mad teabaggers during their tsunami of hate and stupidiity following the health care vote http://bit.ly/diIoFc Even...
Hey there! Wanted to post the link to Russell King's rant with all it's wonderful sources ASAP this A.M. and remind you I'm interviewing Laffy from The Political Carnival today and will play the interview on tomorrow's show, so go here right now http://www.thepoliticalcarnival.net/ and check out one of the blogosphere's better and more reliable blogs. Always great videos, commmentary and links to the day's most important stories.
Okay, here's the link http://bit.ly/bwzYyI to that very righteous rant by Russell King and what makes this valuable is that every last assertion is sourced and linked for you so you can forever have this compendium of links to tales of right wing...
Okay, back again with 2 days of stories and blogging links, and there are so many about the hateful rhetoric coming from the right over the recently passed healthcare bill that it behooves me to start there with "The End of America as You Know it!" http://bit.ly/cHcaip Brought to America by the "Socialist Party" http://bit.ly/c6ANoT And by the by, here's what the teaparty knows about taxes and "stuff" http://digg.com/d31M3Yn?t Here's what they know about democracy Death threats for Rep.'s families http://bit.ly/cJhc9A More deathh threats here http://bit.ly/di3TFL Ahhhh, is there...
Never ask what my titles mean - that would e silly! So it's Monday, the American heathcare bill passed in Congress last night and I decided there were so many linksto post for the stories we covered during today's show that I didn't want to be doing any catch-up blogging.
Starting with the Torries continuous stonewalling on the Afghan detainee issue http://bit.ly/b5DaEp
And then it was on to the healthcare reform bill and the crazy opposition to it - Not that you couldn't be opposed and not crazy, just that all those opposed used extremist language and tactics to try and defeat it starting with the mental cases at the FUX network http://mediamatters.org/columns/...
Okay back blogging on a Sunday to catch up up with the end of my week shows. Today would appear to an historic day south of the border and possibly a pivotal turning point in left/right politics. Here's what I mean:
The Healthcare Reform Bill which by every indication looks like it will pass later today will change the dynamics beginning with the coming Nov. mid-term elections. A newly energized Democratic base will turn up to vote with this tangible, major victory to spur them on. This will keep mid-term losses to a minimum and the dynamics will still favor Dems.
This will hold for 2012 too (barring unforseen events)) and the Republican base, who are the people furthest to the right and responsibble for nominating the candidates for that year including the...
Hey there! Glad to do this like always. Busy preparing tomorrow's show and a bitt exorcised over a couplle of things so recapping Fri. Mon. & Tues.'s shows will help bring down the old blood-pressure!
Friday was pretty low key and stuck to slacker Friday format. I did cover disputes over Conservatives' Budget http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/11/budget-pbo-reax.html?ref=rss
And then stuck to reporting on Climate Science; IPCC errors http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/more-problems-ipcc And how scientists respond http://bit.ly/dtM0S6
MSM...
Don't know who you are but I can do this every day as long as you keep showing up.
Today's show had a story on people from Big Oil companies that I believe to be amongst the world's most evil (not hyperbole) http://bit.ly/9sZfcl And the prestigious journal writes about thhe climate for climate scientists http://bit.ly/9XwtsI made more difficult of course by the aforementioned evil types who are busily funding false studies and muddying the waters in every way they can. Fight these lies any way you can.
Canadian politicians knew about Afghan detainee issue in 2002? Libs in power back then which may explain their lack of zeal in going after conservatives on this issue...
Helllo there! Whomever's reading this, You owe Kyle and a couple of letter writing fools for me blogging on consecutive days. It really doesn't take much encouragement for me to post these links that are the sources for my stories on a daily basis.
Starting with the fiction of the Marjah narrative that we've been reading for the past 3 weeks http://bit.ly/9nEaDm And Canada's head wanker ducking questions on Afghan detainee issue http://bit.ly/cuxUzJ NATO not living up to obligations on training pledges http://bit.ly/9zcL59 And The Public Record...
Well, forced to do this! Actually received encouragement so I have to blog as promised and the upside is I won't have to blog the whole week It's a good thing, seriously. The week is off to a fun start as far as hosting the show goes. Kiran and Rob were both in fine form which means more laughs amid all the savagery... at least for me.
So Monday we started with a story that's doing all it can to disappear down the meory hole right here in Canada about CSIS getting involved inn the interrogation of Afghan prisoners http://bit.ly/d2Rh2W Harper does his best to obfuscate http://bit.ly/cuxUzJ
Gee! The offensive in Marjah was just an exercise in propaganda? Shocking! Okay, not shocking, but maddening...
Okay, welcome back! Got word people are visiting this page in numbers. Leave a note! Encourage me to post bi-weekly, daily even. Anyhow here are the links to the stories I covered last week This is what give my show it's integrity. It's what separates me from the braying, lying jackals of the MSM (pretty goddamned grandiose huh?).
There's a move on to employ sanctions against Iran - China has it's own interests to consider http://nyti.ms/bQU2Kw But of course this doesn't slow down those who seemingly want a 3rd war in the Middle-east http://bit.ly/9ubvtX
And Israel doing it's best to promote war-mongering...
Okee-dokey I'm back here just to maintain the integrity of my show and the stories I report on. The longest week of the year belongs to the last week of February and I thought it would never end. Well, it did and tomorrow March begins so things are getting better right? Contemplate away and here's the many links for the many stories I talked about. So much of this was not breaking through the MSM bubble that it leads me to believe the media is worsening by the day.
Iran says they are not seeking nuclear weapons http://bit.ly/cPCbVE Really http://bit.ly/9Q4w1y Russia concerned about Iran's non-cooperastion but not concerned enough for sanctions or to stop selling them weapons...
A couple of times a week or so I check in and post the many links to the stories I cover on New Media nad Politics to back up what I say. I can always go deeper, but am rarely challenged to do so. Which is okay, I spend a lot of time on research as it is. Still, any time I miss something or forget to post a link please write me. It'd make my day. Here's the "stuff" for Thurs and Fri of last week
Now one month's weather is just weather okay? But Joe over at climateprogress.org covered it because of the media furor in the U.S. about all the snow they had received and how that was proof(?) that there was no climate change. He pulled out the satellite data from the NOAA on January of this year and guess what? Warmest ever! http://bit.ly/bVKfdL...
Okay, this is ridiculous but has to be done. I'm still waiting for comments and more mails. yeah, yeah, everyone's busy and late in the day who's thinnking of what they were listening to in the morning? Me.
So from Monday going forward, beginning with a great reason to love the New Media, Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC ripping glenn blecch a new one http://bit.ly/ar7JXD
Moving on to serious stuff, the offensive taking place in Helmand and the changing story about the civilians killed along the way http://bit.ly/ay2BTz
AP warmongering on Iran http://bit.ly/daj1mB remeber they're a f***ing newswire! And the White House refuses to rule out attacking...
Ah yes, when all else fails go with aliteration. Okay, gettting in the habit of doing this every second day and as there are no complaints I will continue down this path. Hope someone's paying attention (leave a note!) as this takes considerable effort. The former Catholic in me desires to make you all feel guilty. :~)
And speaking of religion, it's getting a bit crazy out in Jeebus land: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/10/835807/-Just-when-you-thought-the-crazy-couldnt-get-crazier?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter...
Trying to keep up (time consuming) and still not sure how many are cactually hecking this out but here goes your shrill morning mann. I sometimes wonder if I'm too shrill or too easy on these people I report on every day. Feel free to let me know your opinion.
Not a lot of conservative scientists out there, I wonder why http://digg.com/d31HquQ Maybe it's 'cause of stuff like this http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scant-arctic-ice-could-me Or this http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rising-acidity-in-the-ocean
The...
Super Bowl Sunday and I`m just catching up to the end of last week. `Before that though want to begin with a story about Canada in Afghanistan and how Canadian contributions will be missed: Fighting its bloodiest conflict since the Korean War, Canada has paid a heavy price — 139 Canadian troops have died. With about 2,800 soldiers in the country, the third-largest contingent in the U.S.-led coalition, the Canadians have taken more casualties, proportionately, than any other.
But by the end of next year, they will be gone.
After four years of often-intense combat since moving down to Kandahar, the spiritual center of the Taliban, Canadian military planners are now fine-tuning their exit strategy, bringing the Afghans in as closely as possible to...
Hello dere! And I'm back with the links from Tues. and Wed. shows. I believe I started Tuesday's program off with the Idahoan Baptist proselytisers attempted kidnapping of 33 children in Haiti - note that no msm article from Jan.31 failed to mention "good intentions" of the kidnappers and the false claim (uninvestigated) that all the children were either orphans or had the permission of the parents to take them away. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5P7S2bN1qim9Se6RfLdzEHRxq3Q
Both claims have subsequently been proven to be untrue: "All of the children have been terribly traumatised," she added. "They were lied to because they were told they were going...
Hello there and let's get started with the Howard Zinn lecture I featured on the program this morning. A progressive and activist for peace and social justice. Mr. Zinn was an Historian and Professor Emeritus whose 1980 published work "A People's History of the United States" helped change the way people viewed U.S. history. He passed away last Wednesday at the age of 87 and if the msm* was not so busy focusing on the sex lives and drug consumption habits of people no one n their right mind woud ccare about we all might have heard more about this very good and decent human. http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/1/8/howard_zinn_three_holy_wars
*I assume if you come here you know msm means...
Right wing noise machine lying about one of Obama's best moments during SOTU speech - calling out the right wing Supremes http://mediamatters.org/research/201001280013?newsref=www.eschatonblog.com
And while we're here let's take a closer look at the reprehensible behaviour of one said Judge -- Alito! http://digg.com/d31H3BX
More reich wing crap about a speech that received up to 83% favorable ratings depending on the poll. Watch how quickly those poll numbers slip down the memory hole. Obama's a jerk! etc. http://mediamatters.org/research/201001280005
And here's a kos diary on...
Okay, welcome back to, 'Here's the Missing Links.' Life has been busy and hair-raising so it's kept me from uploading the shows in a timely fashion and posting the links. Remember, these links are the source of information used on the program. If there's anything I forget to post or info you need help on, drop me a line at oldpunk@cjlo.com or twitter me @knoxkp and I'll be glad to help.
Starting with Friday's links: Flushing democracy down the crapper? A lot of opinions starting with the good people at ThinkP http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/21/citizens-united/ The Prez vows to fight decision http://www....
How's the war in Iraq going you ask? Just fabulous of course: http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2010/01/20/wednesday-7-iraqis-killed-61-wounded/
Of course Americans would never know it - they get the sanitized version of the news http://www.faxts.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=207:americans-getting-sanitized-view-of-middle-east-war&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=121
This guy is just funny and always right on and you should read his blog regularly...
And we're back - every damned day and no comments! Well, here are the links anyhow.
Democrats lose Kennedy's senate seat http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/01/republican-kennedys-seat
To this guy! http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2007/03/02/massachusetts_state_senator_scott_brown?blog=119
And so msm wisdom (?) is that dems must abandon health care reform - there is no bigger idiot than David Brooks in the msm. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/19/brooks/...
Okay, back with the rest of today's story links.
These bastardos showed up in Haiti to participate in some disaster profiteering http://rebelreports.com/post/341031627/us-security-companies-offer-services-in-haiti
Three suspicious deaths at Guantanamo http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/not-three-suicides-at-gitmo-three-homocides-in-a-gitmo-black-site.html
The persistence of oil at the site of the Exxon Valdez spill http://www.adn.com/...
Hey! Only have a short time so I'll post the most important link of the day and come back this evening. This MLK speech is righteous, anti-war and it cost him support from all corners, even the NAACP. There's really nothing that controversial other than the truth about war and who gets to fight in them. It's as pertinent now as it was then.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/265.html
And just for fun, Ronald Reagan losing his mind at the UN:
Obama at the end of year one, from The Nation http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100201/forum Don't tell me the left doessn't criticize their owwn or that there's some sort of Obama adoration going on these are pointed critiques!
A poll I wish Obama would take to heart http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/14/poll-principle-bipartisan/
Bush and the debt http://ow.ly/WF1X How the hell did he get away with this crap? He gave away everyone's future to the lords of the earth. The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus -- with...
Sure hope someone's reading this blog! Here's my list of story links from slacker friday - appropriately posted on Sunday night.
rush limbaugh is out of his ever-loving frickin' mind! http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201001130018
But he couldn't do it without MSM help from the likes of Time magazine's editor Mark Halperin: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/21/halperin/
Another example of Halperin wankery this time breaking the rules (such as they are) of journalism: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201001120012
On the climate change front from the Christian Science...
Okay, a fair amount of work is going into providing the links from my daily program and I'm going to need to see more mails at oldpunk@cjlo.com for this to at least seem worthwhile. Comments, suggestions, disagreements or anything else you can think of.
Today we started the show with a piece about Mark Halperin, editor of Time magazine and his tacit support of the hate-filled wanker known as rush limpballs (I'm exagerrating? go look at what he was saying just today about Haiti http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/14/limbaugh-haiti-tampons/ ). See this link from Glennzilla for support for this kind of idiocy from Mark:...
Hey there!
Here are the links for Wednesday's show that featured an interview with William Ray. The audio will be available tomorrow morning and from here on in each day's program will get uplaoded directly after the program is over. So, if you want to keep ahead of the MSM it'll be easy as the links will also be posted on the blog for your edification and verification. I say it on the program all the time, trust no one excepting yourself.
Here's the Democracy Now broadcast of their report on the thugs at Blackwater: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/blackwatergate-private-...
Good morning! Here's a list of places you can go to if you want to send some help to the people in Haitti: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/45lHme/www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/0...
Today's lead story is weirder than normal, unbelievably it involves real Wall Street bloodsuckers making 1.8 billion dollars soaking the poor and the sick, and that's not a metaphor.
You can go listen to this morning's entire show by clicking selected audio above. It's all there and includes all the great music I played today.
Next story is about factory farms and the diseases that have been spawned there and something called H5N1 which might explain why gov't.s behaved they way they did in treating the relatively mild...
Hello everybody! There are new features and all kinds of goodies on the way as I get my show and this blog up to speed. You can find me on my twitter account, I'm knoxkp. You'll also be able to listen to my shows whether you're up early in the AM or not. Anyhow, lots of links to get posted so here goes:
Join the facebok group to try and end the prorogue and get our gov't. off it's ass http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227662474562&ref=nf
Contact your MP or Mr. harper and voice your displeasure (you could of course voice how happpy you are that they took a couple of extra months of so as to avoid work too, if you're so inclined.) Either way make yourself heard! ...
Good Morning! Going to try and blog this while I do the show. Hope it works and the links are of use! Write me at oldpunk@cjlo.com if you have wuestions, requests etc. Away we go...
Today's 1st story our prick of a PM, hey! Prorogue this! http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/senate-reform-plan-sparks-s...
msnbc gets one right! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id...
Hello again. Back with some links to stories we're keeping track of at New Media and by we I mean me! Starting with, it's cold outside so global warming must be a hoax http://tinyurl.com/yzgr75g
Carbon capture and where and how to store the carbon http://ow.ly/SXjS
The Chinese not crazy about taking action on climate change, but they're not crazy http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/05/china-freak-storm-global-warming-s...
joe lieberman a low...
What do ya' want for nothing?
Hello to all who come to check this out. This will be mostly about links to the stories I use on my show. At least for now. There are plans to direct you to my own blog and twitter and all that, but later.
For now, since Copenhagen and climate change (weirdness) are my story of the year I'll start with links to that. I was very upset with the results of Copenhagen to say the least and yet there are far more informed and sanguine voices who disagree with me. I'm rooting for them to be right starting with David Doniger: http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/28/the-copenhagen-accord-a-big-step-forward/ Further, from the Guardian, a...
Hello dear listeners!
I've not missed blogging much so it's important for you to encourage me by writing me e-mails and such to tell me I'm: a) awesome b) out of my mind c) pissing into the wind or d) all of the above
You can mail me at oldpunk@cjlo.com by the by.
The integrity of my show kind of demands that I post the links and sources that I rely on so even if you don't encourage me I'll be here anyhow.
Let's start with the deal, such as it was, that Obama struck in Copenhage. It's not much of a deal as most of you have probably already heard but there is more to it than meets the msm's eyes. For the uninitiated the msm = the mainstream media.
Is it possibly a game changer?...
| Artist | Song Title |
| News... | |
| Artist | Song Title |
| Al Henderson Septet | the tree house |
| Al Henderson Septet | in search of a soul |
| Talk Spot | |
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