The Harper government is closing B.C.’s command center for emergency oil spills while promoting two pipeline projects that would spike tanker traffic on our coast.
Scientist mocks phone-in solution to disaster response following federal cuts @ Canada.com
Israeli reservist denied asylum to Canada
An Israeli army reservist who deserted after refusing to destroy terrorist tunnels in Gaza, then sought political asylum in Canada, has been ordered to return home.
He was also branded a draft dodger, rather than a legitimate conscientious objector, in a court decision that rejected his claim the Israeli military routinely breached international humanitarian law.
The case hardens the Federal Court of Canada’s stand against foreign nationals fleeing democratic homelands to avoid military service by taking refuge in Canada, as was seen in recent cases of U.S. soldiers refusing to serve during the war in Iraq. (Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
It’s not so simple, Harper, at least not to the First Nations people in Alberta. See my previous blog posts on tar sands.
Here’s a taste:
and the tarsands spin continues from the Stephen Harper conservative Canadian government!
Leo Hickman @ Guardian ~ Canadian campaign puts the spin on ‘ethical oil’: Tar sands website promotes a binary world where Canadian oil is ‘ethical’ and the rest is produced by ‘oppressors’ #tarsands #climate
Canada’s Ethical Oil Tar Sands Campaign Really Says ‘Stay Addicted To Oil’ @ TreeHugger
CBC ~ ‘Ethical oil’ campaign polishes oilsands image
Taken as a whole, [Jeffrey] Feldman argues persuasively that the right wing’s use of violent language and imagery over the past 30 years has gravely, deeply—perhaps even mortally—wounded the American body politic. As social theorists from John Dewey to Miss Manners have pointed out—and as my Canadian neighbors seem to understand as the central fact of their civic existence—civility is the necessary ingredient that allows democracies to function. Without it, there is no common good, no mutual respect, no reason to have faith in our ability to govern together wisely and well. When these basic agreements fail, so does our ability to self-govern. Reading this book from my peaceable perch on a mountainside in western Canada, the destruction of America’s civic order, as Feldman describes it, looks utter and complete.
Somehow, we need to find our way back to each other. And, as simple as it sounds, it may start with a determined resolution that we are going to be civil to each other. Always. Even to your obnoxious Dittohead neighbor. Even to your annoying fundamentalist sister-in-law. Even to that jerk with the faded W’04 bumper sticker who stole your parking space. Even to the whinging concern troll in the comments thread. Catharsis feels like a birthright in our I-want-it-now society; but it’s a luxury that progressives can no longer afford. Every time we give into it, the culture splits a little wider, and our odds of ever healing again it grow a bit more remote. It’s time for progressives to step up and show the rest of the country how grownups behave. We’ve got an example to set, and a hundred million people to educate.
| — |
Sara Robinson “Outright Barbarism vs. The Civil Society” | OurFuture.org Campaign for America’s Future, 5/6/08 I have been struggling with some characterizations of Christine O’Donnell, and by chance happened upon this piece I had saved for some future use. The time for its use appears to be now. Robinson calls for nothing less than for progressives to engage in the culture change necessary for the basic operation of a civic order. |
In the era of extreme energy, we are indeed, “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” Because it’s environmentally unsustainable, it’s becoming politically unpalatable for Canada, our major oil supplier, to extract from tar sands, and we want more.
A group of lawmakers are calling on the Obama administration to take a closer look at the significant environmental impacts of a proposed massive pipeline that would carry Canadian tar sands oil 2,000 miles from northern Alberta all the way down to refineries in Texas and tankers off the Gulf Coast. Tar sands mining emits three times more greenhouse gas pollution than traditional oil and has come under heavy criticism from environmental and indigenous groups. Democracy Now!’s Mike Burke speaks to Clayton Thomas-Müller, a Canadian indigenous activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network.
When I woke up this morning, I thought one of the neighbor’s firepits was still going. I thought “How rude!” Little did I know that the problem was much bigger. This drives home the degree to which we are all one people on one Spaceship Earth. We all live downwind.
This is an AP report, and I can’t redistribute it, so you’ll have to follow the link for the story.
We just love hearing news about schools introducing kids to yoga. And it seems that Canadian schools really understand the many benefits that yoga practice can offer students and are leading the way in making time on the mat an accepted part of a curriculum. Now, thanks to Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Board of Education, Vancouver’s school district 41 in is approving yoga for school credit. Other Canadian schools also offer high school credit. We want to know: Do schools in your area offer school credit for yoga?
Posted by Diane Anderson on March 19, 2010 10:00 AM | Permalink
I’ve heard about these, but I’ve never seen a picture of one. It’s quite striking. Wildlife doesn’t observe the boundaries humans place on its habitats, but it will use these overpasses (and underpasses).
vild:
jjarichardson:unedited-peace:constantflux:whisperingwillow:treehuggingarchitect:
This, my friends, is what I like to call awesome. It’s a wildlife overpass….kind of like a pedestrian bridge, only the pedestrians it caters to are the four legged kinds. Deer, elk, moose, wolf, and lynx alike, as well as their kin, will use this little bridge to safely cross the human road, what was once a barrier.
Alberta, Canada, 1999 Photography by Joel Sartore
