Cover of Men in Black (Deluxe Edition)A look at what's new
The latest messages from the Google Reader team
via Official Google Reader Blog by Brian Shih on 16/02/11
Today we’re excited to announce some updates to the official Google Reader app for Android. Over the last couple of months, we’ve added some of your most-requested features: - Unread count widget - choose any feed, label, person, or “all items” ... See more »
Looking Backward in the Year 2011
Der Spiegel runs down W’s “tragic legacy” in the long, long, looooong decade of U.S. decline that followed 9/11:America was trapped in Iraq for years, where a victory was a long time coming and was never a real one. It is currently trapped in Afghanistan, where victory no longer even seems possible. And it is trapped in an embrace with his its ally Pakistan, which it does not trust and yet cannot release.Hey, at least Chimpy managed to pull things together after 2006, making his “one of the more successful [presidencies] in U.S. history” [sic].
These are costly defeats for America and the rest of the world. According to a conservative estimate of Brown University, there have been almost 140,000 civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. The massive retaliation cost more than $3 trillion (€2.2 trillion) — dollars that would have been better used in America’s schools or in the wallets of US citizens.
For a short time after the attacks, the country seemed united. Americans embraced each other. Even the cold city of New York suddenly seemed warm. But instead of cultivating public spirit, President Bush sought to find a pretext — any pretext — to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. This is his most tragic legacy, the fact that America can no longer even mourn its victims properly — because Americans have long been not just victims, but also perpetrators.
[Insert pregnant pause/needle scratch here.]
Ahem, yes, well, as they say, read the whole damn thing — and pray that abumuqawama only temporarily took leave of his senses (wait — he’s one of those CNAS Pollyanas who still think COIN is somehow going toUnderpants Gnome a NATO victory in Afghanistan; all hope = lost.)
Gary Don’t. Please, Just Don’t.
I have no clue who I’m going to endorse for the NDP leadership — but I sure as shit know which potential candidate will never, ever receive a vote from yours truly: sellout 3rd way posterchild Gary Doer, who has apparently sold his soul to
rock & roll
Ethical Oil™, that filthiest of filthy lucre.
rock & roll
Ethical Oil™, that filthiest of filthy lucre.
Since becoming Canada’s ambassador to the United States in late 2009, the former Manitoba premier has travelled from the Carolinas to California, and to most points in between, to make the case for the oil sands.
[...]
Calgary-based TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline fits into Mr. Doer’s economic pitch as a major infrastructure project that would create 20,000 unionized construction jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax and other revenues in the six states through which it would pass.
The pipeline would almost double the capacity of Alberta crude that TransCanada can ship south, to 1.1 million barrels a day, and provide a direct line to Gulf of Mexico refineries on the Texas coast.
The U.S. State Department must approve the project since the pipeline crosses an international boundary and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised a decision by year-end.
[...]
Mr. Doer, who was a highly-popular New Democratic premier and whose name has been raised as a future federal party leader, is hardly taking the pipeline’s approval for granted.
To everyone he meets these days, he insists the 2,700-kilometre Keystone XL would adhere to far tougher safety standards than any of the 235,000 kilometres of oil pipelines already built in the United States.
And he counters the reputation of oil sands crude as “dirty” owing to the greater amounts of freshwater depletion, greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation it causes compared with conventional oil production.
“We believe that when somebody claims something that’s 10 years old about water utilization or [carbon] emissions, we have to put the facts on the table,” he said, noting that it now takes far less water to produce a barrel of oil sands oil than it does to produce the same amount of ethanol.
“There have been major improvements made. We’re not saying to anyone that they’re complete. We’ve got to keep using innovations to improve water utilization and emissions per barrel.”
Yeah, no offense to those who get giddy imagining Doer at the NDP helm going into 2015, but come the fuck on. Handing the party over to the Harper Government’s hand-picked agent of environmental destruction would be the ultimate desecration of Layton’s pragmatic, progressive legacy. And that is attendant reality Dippers will also have to face.
Really.
1.6% of my life...
Stretched Thin
Not quite Tar... Not quite Oil... Is it Chicken!!!?
So the Oilsands, tarsands, whatever. It's actually called bitumen. Not quite tar. Not quite oil. It's bitumen, stuck in sand. The Natives used to use it to patch their boats with. You see, when cold, it acts like a water repellant, and you can almost make hockey pucks out of it (no wonder us Canadians must love it eh?!). But what it needs to pump and separate from sand is a bunch of heat. Steam to be exact (or hot water, really hot water). So to extract it, we plug in the kettles, sort of - anyways, we burn a bunch of energy - clean natural gas really - or sort of clean if you remember to count the carbon. And then to make sure it doesn't refreeze into hockey pucks, it's mixed with oil. Yes - oil is used to make other oil. Or condensate to be exact. Not quite oil. Only the lightest of oil. Olive oil, almost - well... not quite. Anyways. to sum up, a bunch of wood is chopped down and rivers are polluted - I digress; that's my summary of the oilsands, or tarsands, or bitumen, or oil user, or gas user or tree chopper or river polluter. It's kind of under the spotlight by the US as a not-so-squeaky-clean product.
A Choice of 1.6 Concerns
So in order to make it a squeaky clean product and get the seal of approval to ship it across to our good ol' neighbour, what does our government do? I'll provide two options:
1 - Immediately address elevated levels of pollutants in the waterways by reducing the point source; address climate change by adopting Environment Canada framework for reducing oil sands carbon footprints; develop a strategic outline of responsible resource development through planned, orchestrated production increases
or
2 - throw millions of dollars towards monitoring equipment and never really stopping the water pollution, scrap the climate change plans, cause hey; what Canadian doesn't want our winter to be a little warmer right? and finally, we'll green light every project that plans to produce bitumen, jam a pipeline down the US's throat by sending a bunch of our best oil saleman (i mean government officials) to lobby on behalf of an industry we own no part of.
Whew....
I find myself flabbergastroided (kind of flabbergasted, but mostly feeling gastrointestinally haemorrhoided) - instead of a government that will keep our air and water fresh and clean, we have to settle for one that's willing to lobby for an industry that employs 550,000 (2006 statistic), or 1.6% of all Canadians (again 2006 statistic). When did 1.6% of us represent a majority? Our statistics are telling us that climate change is real and effects all of us - should our government not be focussed on all of us instead of 1.6%? For myself, I've planted into my leftwinged attitude into a conservative stronghold, left stuck to wonder how so many blindly choose to check a name for fossilized principles - and fossilized truths... we don't own any of it, but we are definitely paying for it.
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