Canada does not do very well vis-a-vis our Kyoto commitment.
So here we are in Canada, which along with the States and Australia was laughed out of Nairobi for its attitudes to climate change and Kyoto, and we are off to mail a letter and what is on the current stamp from Crown Corporation Canada Post? Wind turbines. With mountains in the background. Where are the smokestacks for the coal burning power plants? Where are the giant trucks digging up the tarsands?
That’s the best case scenario.
In Friday’s New York Post, Regan comes out spitting and clawing and, frankly, breaking my heart. The pain and fury she suffered as an abused and unavenged wife sizzles on the page. In a self-penned article titled “Why I Did It,” she writes, “I wanted the confession for my own selfish reasons and for the symbolism of that act.” She says that her charming, accomplished, handsome first husband knocked her out and put her in the hospital. “I had once been that young woman … who believed in the beauty of romance, the power of … Like Nicole Brown, I believed with all my heart … and then got punched in the face.” Ever since O.J.’s acquittal, which she predicted and which she watched, weirdly, in the company of Howard Stern, Regan says she has wanted some form of “conviction.” “And if Marcia Clark couldn’t do it, I sure wanted to try.”
If it turns out Regan made any of this up, I may go O.J. on her myself and skip the suicide watch. But absent any proof to the contrary, and given the widespread and sadly unreported abuse of women generally, I believe her, as I never believed O.J. or trusted the proffered explanations of the bloodthirsty crowds calling for either his acquittal or his head. After a dozen years of abstinence, I will definitely be watching on TV next week as O.J. squirms and suffers and cowers before every woman ever pummeled anywhere by a sorry-assed man.
Turns out, it takes a white woman to clean up a racial mess she didn’t make and drag us to where we should have been all along — demanding justice. Nothing less, nothing more, nothing else. If Judith Regan is half the woman this coup hints at, by Christmas we may all be dancing on O.J.’s grave.
Memo to O.J.: Kill yourself | Salon.com
But why did Judith Regan publish it? – NY Times
Now the blowback:
Battered by a storm of protest and criticism, News Corp. — the parent company of the Fox television network — has decided to pull the plug on “If I Did It,” a two-part interview with O.J. Simpson that had been scheduled for next week.
In addition, the company said it was canceling publication of a Simpson-authored book with the same title that was to be released Nov. 30 by ReganBooks, a subsidiary of News Corp.
Fox parent cancels O.J. Simpson interview, book – Mercury News
Hasn’t enough oxygen been wasted by The Juice already?
I feel like shooting that idiot myself. And donating his $3.5 million advance to protect battered women.
On one of the small properties in the west hills of Calgary, rapidly being engulfed by residential communities, is this Inukshuk.
It’s a shame so many houses are being thrown up so quickly. And so close together.
This stone man will not be here much longer.
Click the image for a larger version.
Billions of dollars are missing in Iraq.
Where are they?
This 2-part audiocast is a shocker. I’ve listened to it several times.
Iraq has become a vast financial black hole.
Since the war began in 2003, the Americans have spent around $30 billion of their money – and at least $20 billion of Iraq’s own money – in rebuilding the country. But where has it all gone?
Mark Gregory has followed the money trail from Iraq to Washington via a kebab shop in Jordan.
He discovers that there have been allegations of fraud, mismanagement and corruption on such a gigantic scale that much of the money is now untraceable. …
The US-led administration, talking shortly before the return of sovereignty, offered a vision of a country in which the lights worked and clean water flowed from the taps.
But two-and-a-half years after the handover, many Iraqis say their lives are getting worse despite the vast sums allocated for rebuilding.
Mark Gregory explains how profiteering, corruption, bad management and the strength of insurgency have all paid a part in the failure to rebuild Iraq.
BBC results for Baghdad billions
Read a summary on the BBC website: Baghdad’s ‘missing’ billions
Even the NY Times is in trouble.
BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The dark cloud inside the silver lining of the dark cloud
Sounds crazy?
Child autism rates have been rising over the past few decades. What’s causing it?
Gregg Easterbrook paints a pretty convincing argument:
Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3.
The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.
TV Really Might Cause Autism – Slate.com
… more boring US politics
You would be hard pressed to prove that Democrats are any better politicians than Republicans.
But Republicans are far more hypocritical. They fear monger, pander to racism, cheat, steal and out-lie the Democrats by a wide margin. (Some would say they are more skilled at the “art of politics”.)
Case in point — “happy-go-lucky sexual predator, Mark Foley, the Republican congressman from Palm Beach, Florida, who had been luring teenage congressional pages to his townhouse of iniquity” — only the latest in a long line of two-faced Republicans.
Publicly Foley had been fervently anti-Gay. And the first elected official to vote to “protect children”.
Sidney Blumenthal gives a run-down of the scandals among GOP lawmakers if you want to be reminded of past deceit.
A terrible story.
One killed for sure. Children led off to be “detained”.
It hit the major media an hour ago.
My read on this crime against civilians posted on my hiking blog.
Maher Arar was guilty. But only guilty of being Muslim.
Having heard Arar interviewed, I must say his story sounds legitimate. Authorities over-reacted.
Arar is waiting on a personal apology from the Prime Minister.
A Syrian-Canadian has been totally exonerated of having ties with Al Qaeda — after the RCMP and US Department of Homeland Security conspired to have him shipped to Syria, where he was tortured for ten months.
Maher Arar was passing through the US on the way back to Canada when the DHS detained him. The Mounties sent the US authorities bogus intel about him, saying that he had “links with Al Quaeda” because he was friends with someone who might be an Al Quaeda sympathizer. The US authorities sent him to Syria, where they (and the RCMP) fed questions to his Syrian torturers for months. Eventually, his torturers extracted a “confession” from him.
When he returned to Canada, he publicized his plight and the RCMP responded by smearing him, publicizing his “confession” and saying that he’d gotten what he deserved.
Now a public Canadian inquiry (which the DHS boycotted, refusing to disclose any information) has totally cleared Arar, and the RCMP has apologized for sending a citizen to a corrupt totalitarian state to be tortured because he was friends with someone they didn’t like.
… Three other Canadian citizens were also tortured in the Middle East under similar circumstances: Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muyyed Nurredin.
Boing Boing: Canadian deported to Syria for torture is cleared
Ouch. I fly today.
You should subscribe to the excellent treehugger.com blog. It is sometimes over the top irrational — but not on this post:
One transatlantic flight for a family of four creates more CO2 than that family generates domestically in an entire year. (source)
Air Travel and Climate Change: Take the Train
As a frequent flyer, this really hurts.
We need this kind of statistical data to significantly improve the Earth. We need to take an economists viewpoint. Seems we need to fly less … or come up with aeroplanes with better technology.
Up to 25% of the world’s aviation carbon dioxide emissions could be cut if airlines, airports and governments worked together, the Virgin boss said.
Sir Richard Branson last week pledged Virgin airlines profits worth $3bn (£1.6bn) towards renewable energy initiatives.
Rick McCharles 