Who Knew? Smog is Good.
Well, it’s not that it’s all that good but it’s not entirely bad either. At least that’s what the Chinese government was telling its people as a toxic cloud covered…
The Mound of Sound
Poking the Spies In the Eyes With a Sharp Pen
Government surveillance just got another bloody nose. This time it was some 500-top authors who have joined forces to denounce the degree of state surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden and…
Al Sharpton Makes America Wear their Mandela History
Al Sharpton was on Meet the Press where he was in no mood for the predictable whitewashing of America’s official hostility to Nelson Mandela. “I think it is a betrayal…
Welcome to Pre-Revolutionary America
It’s been well over two centuries since the United States underwent revolution but the next one may not be far off. Chris Hedges this today’s America is in a pre-revolutionary…
Steamrollering Environmentalism
Big Fossil has a powerful new trick. If you’re going to run into a dragged-out fight with environmentalists on a pipeline, play that fight out to keep your opposition tied…
Harper Flushes Fisheries Science Down the Memory Hole
I don’t know if it gets any more Orwellian than this. Last week the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is closing five of its seven libraries, allowed scientists, consultants…
Picking Up the Pieces and Putting Canada Back Together
As the United States leads, Canada follows quietly behind. Just as American society is being shredded by corporatism, so too is Canadian society becoming dismembered. Michael Valpy’s searing look at…
The Revenge of Karl Marx
Marxism is a discredited ideology. We get that. It’s been tried, didn’t work. But there’s still much to learn from the old German philosopher. If you leave aside his unworkable…
US Navy Predicts Ice-Free Arctic in 2016
At first they told us it would happen late this century. Then mid-century. Now the United States Navy expects the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2016. Let’s…
Why Canadians Need to Lead the Road to a New Order
Every day more of us are realizing that growth-based capitalism and neoclassical economics have failed. Adam Smith gave the growth paradigm two hundred years and he was right. Mankind has…
The World’s Loss
Nelson Mandela, dead at 95. The world is a poorer place.
Oh Great, Toe Jam Brie – Just Stop It Already
Can’t we focus on something else, like a cure for cancer? Microbiologists have helped produce human cheese. They’ve gathered bacterial swabs from various parts of the human body (armpits and…
Ben Didn’t Bin By Accident.
He’s a law professor. He’s chief counsel of the PMO and the prime minister’s personal legal adviser. He’s just negotiated an under-the-table cash deal with outside counsel on behalf of…
Don’t Count on Slow and Gradual. National Research Council Warns Climate Change will Be Fast and Abrupt.
The U.S. National Research Council has released a 200-page report warning that climate change is coming on much faster than we appreciate and that we have to prepare for ‘abrupt…
Margaret Wente on Poisoning the Planet
According to Margaret Wente, or at least what she heard from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Athabasca bitumen is a godsend for the poorest, most vulnerable people of the…
Our Afghan War is Still Claiming Canadian Soldiers’ Lives
Four suicides in as many days. You really don’t need to know more than that to grasp how badly our government has failed the men and women it sent into…
Pricing Natural Capital – Long Overdue
She’s the Chief Executive of a mid-sized British investment trust and obviously still believes in the myth of sustainable growth but Katherine Garret-Cox has written an interesting commentary of economic…
A Different Focus for Christmas
Whew, survived Black Friday, Black Friday Weekend, Cyber-Monday – the lot. I didn’t buy anything. Didn’t even go out to the shops. Yet my newspapers, the TV programmes and my…
New Tanker Proposal – Smoke & Mirrors?
As I read the story, two words came to mind – “dry judgment.” The Times Colonist reports that some unnamed, government-appointed panel has released a 66-page report calling for improvements…
Corporatism Goes to War Against Clean Energy
In the United States, corporatism’s own ‘special forces command’ is known as ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is the command centre from which marching orders are issued to…