Obfuscated Thoughtlessness Inversed

"The talks, mediated by Saudi King Abdullah in Mecca, resulted in an agreement on the distribution of cabinet positions, with nine posts going to Hamas and six to Fatah. Three key ministries — foreign affairs, finance and interior, which controls security — will be held by independents. Haniyeh [of Hamas] will stay on as prime minister." - from cbc.ca's Fatah, Hamas agree on unity government

I am the first to admit that my limited knowledge of middle-eastern politics means that I can easily put my foot in my mouth when criticizing violence and the anti-democratic tendencies of the region. Maybe it's hubris, but I feel the need to comment some more on the latest news out of the Palestinian Authority.

Is defying democratic will really a reasonable price for peace? Will this agreement actually lead to peace within the Palestinian territories?

I can't happily accept an outcome that results from the inclusion of three non-aligned and unelected minister's within a government. By the way, I am not talking about David Emerson and Michael Fortier. I am further annnoyed by the agreement being brokered by King Abdullah, an unelected dictatorial monarch whose family was installed in Saudi Arabia by the same British forces who decimated middle east peace for generations by imposing borders for their own purposes, George W. Bush style.

I have written before about how the blockaders of the Palestian Authority should rethink their route towards peace and stop the blockade. However, I do think that the Israeli Prime Minister's demands that the new Hamas led government immediately "Accept and respect all three of the international community's principles, ie, recognition of Israel, acceptance of all former treaties and a clear renunciation of all terror and violence" is more than reasonable. At the same time Israel should get on with it and do the same. Immediately respect international law, recognize the Palestinian Government, accept all former treaties and issue a clear renunciation of violence.

We should not forget that the workings of democracy are very fragile at the best of times. I post this here with the hopes it will be a constructive contribution to the debate about how people can support non-violence and democracy across this extremely violent and anti-democratic region.

Labels: alternatives, anti-war, leftist content creation, nuclear waste, opinion, unfolding

The end of hunger is nearby. Nearer than your fridge. Nearer than your country's continued obesity. It is right under your nose and above your chin. It is as simple as what you cram into your mouth.

Stop eating meat. I will even be happy with you eating one less meat centred meal a week. Or even spending some time reading about the impact of your meat addiction...

The livestock sector is by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land. The total area occupied by grazing is equivalent to 26 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet.

The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.

Livestock are also responsible for almost two-thirds (64 percent) of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems. - from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Livestock's Long Shadow (thanks Stolen Moments)

You make a choice about what you eat every day. For the sake of the more than 825,000,000 people who are undernourished make the right choice, today.

There are 209.5 million undernourished people in India and a further 153.7 million in China. These two nuclear powers alone account for an undernourished population more than ten times that of Canada's total population. A Diktat from our country criticizing their governments choice to fund nuclear weapons before completely establishing food security could be issued, but given our complicity in providing Candu Reactors that helped both China and India go nuclear it would be hard to expect that to lessen the anger of those without enough to eat. Instead, just try to stop eating meat.

Labels: alternatives, anti-war, canada, go veggie, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, health, human rights abuse, nuclear waste, opinion, public power

"Purely from an environmental perspective, we must look at nuclear energy as a key source of energy in Canada. We know it's clean, it produces zero emissions, [and] it produces no greenhouse gases." - Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources.

Yesterday, our natural resources minister alienated himself from reality.

Apparently, Lunn thinks nuclear energy is an emission free form of energy creation. We know the opposite is true. Over the life-cycle of nuclear waste the long-term consequences to our environment are extremely detrimental. More than that, emissions from construction of plants, storage of waste and decommissioning far outstrip that of other sources of power.

Nuclear is not an option to solve the massive crisis in our world's environment.

Labels: alternatives, anti-war, faith, nuclear waste, online campaign, scary technology

Chilean office workers told to shun neckties to ease air conditioning costs is an idea that is anything but the Oddity that the CBC has labeled this story as. The idea of forcing people to wear clothing appropriate for a British winter in the middle of a southern hemisphere summer is ridiculous. What is worse is then air conditioning to make up for it.

If we are forced to chose between planet earth and the fashion norms of the past I choose a future with creative new ideas free from global warming. Now if only we can give up coal, gas-fired and nuclear as power generation sources. Not in British Columbia. At least the NDP are calling Gordon Campbell on this insanity.

Labels: bcmedia, democracy, environment, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, health, nuclear waste, opinion, public power

Google News has numerous effective uses that enhance a news watchers ability to keep up with what is going on in the world.

I have been using Google News for many years as my own personal clipping services, to track specific stories and to get an international perspective on stories that appear to have an excessively narrow view expressed in the source that brings the piece to my attention. This week, I realized that one of my close friends had never used Google News. This is despite having been given explicit instructions to use it a number of times in the past.

I am guessing it is possible you to have not used Google News or at least that you have not made use of it with the advanced features that make it the powerful tool it is. If you have never used Google News you should go there now, and come back to this article to read about the advanced features later.

If you have been a regular Google News reader spend a moment considering these uses.

Google News - Your own clipping service

Let's say you are working on an election campaign, planning on highlighting a specific issue in a community campaign or you are simply completely envious of that cool kid from junior high school and want to track her every move on her way to another dozen Junos. Google Alerts has for a long time been a part of Google News and has recently expanded to include all web content.

Let's go back to the cool kid from high school scenario. In this completely ridiculous scenario, I would add an alert for the search terms "Nelly Furtado", of the type Comprehensive (this includes blog content, news content and web content). Given that I really don't want to think about her more than once-a-week I would then choose that option as how often I would like to receive an alert by e-mail, summarizing new cool kid from high school content. By the way this alert is fictional and I do not receive weekly e-mails with updates of Nelly Furtado from Google News, but I could...



A more likely use? Let's say you are a not a Nelly Furtado stalker and were thinking of working on an election campaign in the City of Victoria in 2008. You could add Google Alerts for local city electables "Dean Fortin", "Pam Madoff", "Alan Lowe" and "Ben Isitt" with the setting as-it-happens. You would then immediately be notified if any of these folks made the news or were written up in a blog. The alert gives you a brief summary of the article and a link to the full article.

Really need to make it your own clipping service? Set up a 2 GB Gmail account to receive the alerts and keep them in a searchable form there.

Google News - Your own anti-censor

When reading an article that appears to show an extremely narrow point of view, choose a few key words, who, what, where, and type them into Google News.

You will instantly be given a screen of all the articles on that topic.

Today, was the fifth anniversary of the opening of the Guatanamo Bay Gulag - the US Government's illegal torture camp. Let's say you happened across a US Government News Release reproduced in a major news source on how Guatanamo Bay was doing wonderfully and almost complying with the law. Thinking to yourself, wow, this seems a remarkably one-sided story you can then do a search for the term Guatanamo-Bay in the Google News search bar. This gives a whole group of stories about illegal detainment, torture, and the protests against the open illegality of the US Administration's on-going breaches of the Geneva convention.

Additionally, let's say in protest against the on-going illegal detentions you decided to set-up a website supporting further protests. You could use Google News to generate an RSS/Atom feed of all stories with the keywords Guatanamo Bay and add that to your website.

Google News - A tool for democracy

As we change this world for the better, sites like Google News will be a powerful means by which to track an expanding dichotomy of debate and to increase your voices potential to be heard at the right time to impact the world.

A discussion like today's freak announcement that; the main strategy scientists had to keep nuclear waste with a 24,000 year half-life safe for 250,000 years, can actually only keep nuclear waste safe for 1400 years, can be tracked on a single website.

Watch the media for your favourite politicians, issues and writers. Post the RSS on a website where other people can read through the content.

But, most of all read the news, read the blogs and don't forget to read the wind!

Labels: alternatives, anti-war, democracy, leftist content creation, nuclear waste, online campaign, opinion, public power, spy-watch, tools

The Liberal Party leadership race is heating up and the members and their wannabe future leaders are melting under pressure.

Oh it is a good season for those of us who aren't members and never will be members of the natural governing party of Canada.

Evidence you ask?

Check this blog entry by a "finished" future Call me Bob staffer on how much Ignatieff shouldn't have used the word ghetto.

I quote:

"NDP voters? Ghetto!?!?!!?? Did he seriously just say that? Mark my words: Iggy is finished."

Iggy eh? Need I say more.. well yes.. here's some more...

What Bob & Iggy shouldn't have done is allowed these lame front pages on their web sites:



Wow. Who designed this crap?

Real - Vrai - Call me Bob - Appelez moi Bob - Canada good - Canada bon.. ack!

Are the designers going to get the ad scandal style contract for the www.gc.ca portal if their respective leader wins. I sure hope not.. and that's not because I like how it looks right now or how I'm still pissed off that www.canada.com belongs to the one of largest Liberal Party donor of the 1990's and former leader of the Manitoba Liberal party. It is because it is illegal to give your incompetent friends contracts damn it.

But I digress. Do you remember NDP Debate Bingo? Well - I propose a new game: Spot the turncoat!

The Rules

Once the Liberal leadership convention goes on tv. Watch it (don't hurt yourself though, feel free to turn it off if it makes you puke). Every time you see a former twit member of another Canadian political party or a disgraced Chretienite on the television, add a comment to this blog, including the person cited, the party they used to be in and whether or not they ran for leader of that party. Extra points for extremely obscure patronage appointments if you can name what they were appointed to and by whom.

An example entry worth extra points for "mating on screen" sighting would be "Trudeau's biographer and former Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski appointed by Chretien and charged with fraud in March of this year seen walking off the convention floor at Saturday afternoon 2:34 pm on CBC Newsworld behind an interview with Dave Haggard (see link to see what he was appointed to and by whom) formerly of the BC NDP."

Former failed leadership contenders from other parties such as Keith Martin (Canadian Alliance), Ujjal Dosanjh (BC NDP), Chris Axworthy (Saskatchewan NDP), Scott Brison (Conservative Party), Bob Rae (Ontario NDP) and Belinda Stronach (Bill Clinton's Canadian Fan Club Party) are all also worth tons of extra "loser" points.

I will ceremoniously award you these points (worth nothing more than bragging rights) for the quality of the turn coat sighted (make sure you include the time and the channel/live website coverage in case we need to verify the winner).

Good luck. May the best amongst you win. Or at least make the judge extremely happy with political obscurity annotated.

Labels: annotation, leftist content creation, nuclear waste, opinion