Edward Snowden gets to leave Moscow airport, finally. The Russkies have given Snowden a one-year temporary asylum to their country. Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden’s Russian lawyer, told the media he handed Snowden asylum papers Thursday and that Snowden’s whereabouts would be kept secret for reasons of security. Snowden would choose his
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The Disaffected Lib: Bystanders to Calamity
Once while visiting remote Rivers Inlet I took shelter an old logging cabin that was apparently undergoing renovation. The inner walls had been stripped bare to reveal newspapers that had once formed the cabin’s insulation. They were old copies of the Vancouver Sun from the 30’s. As I waited for
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: We Emit, These People Get the Tab
Across south Asia there are more than a billion people whose livelihood and lives are utterly dependent on the annual Monsoon rains. The severe impacts of climate change on their hydrological lifeline has left them reeling. This week Pakistan was hit by massive flooding that took their own weather services
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Christy Clark’s Giant Methane Fart – Part Deux
British Columbia premier Christy Clark has visions of our province becoming an energy superpower in its own right thanks to massive reserves of shale natural gas, methane, in northern B.C. just waiting to be fracked. The stuff’s not worth much in Canada. North America has a glut of methane thanks
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: When Athabasca Came to Windsor
There’s a small mountain of Athabasca bitumen byproduct, petcoke, being amassed on the American bank of the Detroit River by – the Koch brothers, of course. And now, clouds of this toxic crap are being aerially repatriated to Canada – to Windsor, Ontario to be exact, carried on the winds
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: A Kid With a Utility Knife Gets Mowed Down. In Montreal, a Guy With 182 Firearms Who Shoots at Cops Gets a Non-Lethal Rubber Bullet.
Isidore Havis is a lucky man. He’s especially lucky that he lives in the Montreal burbs, not in Toronto. 71-year old Havis is in a Montreal hospital with a possible broken bone received when Quebec police decided to take him down with rubber bullets. 18-year old Sammy Yatim lies in
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Define "Democratic Reform"
You knew when Harper appointed Pierre Pepperpot to his cabinet as minister for democratic reform, something remarkably undemocratic was bound to follow. And so it has. Pipsqueak Pollivre has struck, opining that the very provinces that forged our confederation need not approve of the most undemocratic government in Canada’s history’s
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Guardian Praises BC’s Carbon Tax Initiative. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, or, Christy Clark’s Giant Methane Fart
According to The Guardian, British Columbia’s 5-year old experiment with carbon taxes has been a great success and stands as an example of to governments everywhere. In 2008, British Columbia implemented a carbon tax, with the revenue returned to citizens through lowered income taxes. A new peer-reviewed study examines the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Those Critical Five Seconds in the Life and Death of Sammy Yatim
Stills taken from security camera video of the Sammy Yatim execution, published by National Post, may be the most important evidence of all. They reveal, according to the paper, that the young man was felled by the very first round of nine shots fired by the Toronto police gunman. Yatim
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Gone Fishin’
No posts today from me. Time for some long overdue moto-photo therapy. The moto part is my now 8-year old BMW R1200GS, “The Beast”: It is widely considered the best touring motorcycle ever. Not the most comfortable, the Hondas and Harleys, but by far the most capable. I bought this
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Let’s Retire the "Once in a Hundred Years" Label
Calgary had a “once in a hundred years” flood in 2005. Eight years later it had a “once in a hundred years” flood that was three times worse. There’s something reassuring about bad events labelled “once in a hundred years” because you know that you’ve survived something you won’t have
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: We Have to End Police Killings and Brutality.
Indulge me for a minute. Watch closely the video of Saturday night’s killing of a kid aboard a Toronto streetcar. The young man was apparently holding a knife with a 3-inch blade and had ignored a police command to drop it. Ignore the officer with the gun doing the shooting.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Coming Soon, Your Eyes on the World
Astronaut Chris Hadfield reconnected countless millions of people to the wonders of space. His space station performance of the David Bowie classic “Space Oddity” has racked up more than 17-million hits on YouTube since its release two months ago. Now two Vancouver brothers have come up with a venture to
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What’s Old Is New Again. The Return of the Workhouse.
Stephen Harper has a prison fetish. Despite steady declines in crime rates in Canada over the past four decades, Steve is hell bent on building new prisons. We like to mock him for this but maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it as the product of a whacked-out
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Does the Solution to Climate Change Rest On Economic Reform?
What follows began as a comment I attempted to leave at A Puff of Absurdity in reponse to a post by Marie Snyder that you really should read. In it, Marie questions whether, as a civilization, we have become “too stupid to live.” Hi Marie. I have been wrestling with
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: This Doesn’t Look Quite Right
A knife-wielding man on a TTC streetcar last night wound up on the receiving end of a barrage of police gunfire. A horde of cops had the streetcar surrounded when one officer opened fire. First three shots. Then another four shots and then another and finally one last shot. Nine
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Maybe We Shouldn’t Put All our Eggs in One Aerial Basket
Britain did something profoundly stupid in the early 30s. It invested a huge amount of its air force budget in twin-engine, light bombers. These designs were easily capable of out-running fighter aircraft like the Hawker Fury and the Gloster Gladiator of the day. That meant bombers could range independently, in
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: From Paradise to Paradise Lost
If you’ve never experienced the magic of California’s Pacific Coast Highway, you might want to add that to your list of things to see before they’re gone forever. To a motorcyclist, Hwy 1, the “PCH”, is paradise. The two-lane blacktop undulates along the rugged California coast, dipping from cliff tops
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: NOAA Releases New Warming Data – Deniers Flummoxed, Again
Here’s the skinny from the National Climate Data Center of the U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. It’s just boring data but it goes to refute the claim that global warming has magically stopped. The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for June 2013 tied with 2006
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Climate Change and the Attack of the Cannibal Lobster
It’s kind of funny but it’s really not, anything but.
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