Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Rage. Disgrace. Shame.

Take your pick, you’d be totally justified in feeling all three and more when you hear what Canadian judges, politicians, and mining companies want to do with your lakes and rivers.

Condemned Lakes. Brilliant URL for the story, isn’t it? Usually humans condemn something/someone when it/they are irreparable. Not our current leaders; they are acting in an inhuman manner, and bring disgrace to us all. They are condemning our children and wildlife, unborn even, to die of cancer and industrial poison. They lie that the poisons can be contained in a land with open and moving water. Have you known a dam to last forever? Does groundwater not flow downstream? Gravity works in Canada; don’t believe their lies.

Can you feel the shame? If you can’t, you probably shouldn’t tell me. I’d just question your humanity.

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Red Tory shows us that the Conservative’s spokes-oil-blob is concerned about our lakes.

The Canadian DMCA Bill C-61 has tens of thousands of Canadians plotting to take down the Conservative government. Almost surprisingly, in my opinion, the more formal education you have, the more likely you are to oppose this bill. I don’t think that’s taking into account young people who haven’t yet graduated from high school, most of whom would surely oppose their lifestyles being criminalized. Disturbingly, if the poll is accurate, the educated have a lot of teaching to do, in order to turn public opinion squarely against this outrageous sell out to American special interests.

Poll courtesy of Lance.

You also SHOULD NOT MISS the [almost] 10 Minute Interview with Jesse at Search Engine cornering Prentice on every day, real life scenarios. Prentice says nothing true, or ethical aside from pointing out that the government is not going to find copyright violators, it’s going to be all private damages sought in court by copyright holders. Supposedly record companies can’t sue for the copyright holding artists, that was the probably bogus suggestion given by Prentice since it’s my understanding that the record labels own the copyrights for the artists they represent.

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Hat tip to Geist’s Facebook group, which you should join if you have Facebook.

There will be more in my series on Bill C-61, you can count on that.

CC’s blog has some apt words for the Minister too.

The Conservatives are coming! The Conservatives are coming!

I guess Jim Prentice is looking to lose his seat next election, or at the very least his Ministry. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, Michael Geist, myself, and many, many others are going to take his political career down if he empowers the MAFIAA and their army of litigious lawyers.

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Also worth noting, is that CIRA (not the MAFIAA tied CRIA) has changed its WHOIS policy, and allows copyright holders to get your personal .ca domain registration information just by CLAIMING that they want to sue/contact you. Sick!

I took a day off work, and went on a trip to Estevan that the UofR put on, so I saw the SaskPower Boundary Dam coal fired electricity plant from the outside, and the inside of a test CO(2) capture facility.

Unfortunately it’s just a test, and only separates out 4 tons a day, when we need to catch closer to 4000 tons (as of about 10 years ago in my opinion). And of course when I got home, there was a new SaskPower bill waiting for me in the mail…

South of Weyburn is the Encana oil pumping and monitoring facility.

They inject pure and (process-naturally) odourized CO(2) into the ground to increase oil extraction.

The Conservative MPs are sending out pathetic polls asking “Do you support Stephen Harper’s tax cuts? [] Yes [] No”. As if that isn’t bad enough, I found one blowing in the wind outside of my apartment building. I picked it up, and it was from Gerry Ritz. One big problem; he’s the MP for Battlefords-Lloydminster which is over 400km away! The flyer didn’t blow here, I found others like it in the junk mail discard bin under the mail boxes. What the heck are his MP communication flyers doing in Regina?

I think the Conservatives are spamming names of their non-disgraced MPs in places other than where they are elected, to try and got non-compromised names in front of the public. Lukiwski, Vellacott, contribute to the growing, and unflattering list of Saskatchewan Conservatives with serious scandals in the not so distant past.

Wandering Coyote noticed this sham attack advertising which uses your tax money (to respond to MPs, and I won’t confirm to receive it from them, but I suspect that too) in the guise of MP-constituent communication. She also learned officially why it’s happening.

I think Ritz’s propaganda ending up in Ralph Goodale’s riding, is not by coincidence.

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Hat tip to Ryan A.

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And it really couldn’t be more fitting than having a Blob of Oil speaking for Harper’s Conservatives in the latest Flash attack ads on Dion. It fits so well - slimy, out of Alberta, and ready to cause more global warming. See willyoubetricked.ca if you’re interested in seeing the ridiculous ad.

Ed is justifiably cheesed right off. No one told him that taking a $50,000+ raise was going to draw criticism from the local media. Fortunately for him, the Edmonton paper and Calgary Herald weren’t told they could criticize either, so they asked him instead if he was mad about the HNIC theme song being changed so CBC could save money.

I’ll have more about the Conservatives’ problems in advertising this week, but for now, feast your eyes on the party’s willyoubetricked.ca ? I’m not going to link to the site, if you’re really curious you’ll get to copy/paste it. Someone sent me the site in an effort possibly to social-market it (and hey they were partly successful, I’m talking about it). Unfortunately there will be some people who see the site that will be convinced by the lies on it. Fortunately for the Liberals and other parties, those people were probably already Conservative voters anyhow.

Since there’s no official contact email on the website, you can only assume the Conservatives don’t want the average visitor to know they are behind the parody of their ridiculous official position. You could email them at willyoubetricked@gmail.com and ask why their website performs so slowly (it’s made entirely of Adobe Flash), or why they don’t have their party’s logo on it. Anyway, it’s pre-election, election advertising at its worst.

But hey, when you’re Big Oil’s Stool Pigeon, you have to poop somewhere. Might as well be on the WWW. More progressive bloggers were sent the site too.

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And the Liberals too sent out a funny call to members the other week.

“An Urgent Message from the National Campaign Co-Chairs,” was the subject! No kidding! We all know what to do when you see “An Urgent Message” in your inbox…

Expecting a Nigerian scam sob story, I wasn’t disappointed.

Dear Liberal Friends:

The events of the past few weeks have made it clear that we need to ensure the Liberal Party wins the next election.

We have a Conservative Government that had its offices raided by Elections Canada, its Minister of Foreign Affairs resign over his failure to safeguard national security documents and its Finance Minister managed to return us to the brink of a deficit that Canadians worked so hard to erase.

In order to win the next election, we need to ensure that the Liberal Party and Liberal riding associations have the resources to win nationally and locally. We know the Conservatives have millions to spend as they struggle to cling to power. We cannot let them succeed.

By joining the Victory Fund, Liberals will help build a strong national party and strong local riding associations. After the tax credit is applied, the actual cost of a $10 monthly donation is only $2.50!

$2.50 a month to defeat Stephen Harper.
…
The Liberal Party needs your help – please join the Victory Fund today.

Yours sincerely,
Senator David Smith
Nancy Girard
Mark Marissen

And if that pitch doesn’t work, there’s probably an autoworker job waiting for you if you contribute.

Mosaic was lots of fun again this year. More Pavilions! They’d have to add more days though, because even with the 3 nights, I was still unable to make it to 3 of them, taking the bus to well over half.

The bus was plugged up at 10:15 at the Italian pavilion, and it was raining cats and dogs after 5 minutes of standing at the bus stop. I think I managed to fit about 6 and a half people under my umbrella. The drunk high school girl who was trying desperately to land in the gutter by swooning backwards, was not invited, and seemed oblivious and accepting of her perilous situation anyway.

We ran inside, and after a quick second bite in the Italian club, we caught the bus and made friends with a very drunk man who ended up in the north end when he was looking to be south. We hopped off at the Poltava Ukrainian pavilion, and enjoyed the closing dancing and live orchestra. I’ll probably put a clip of it on YouTube later, it was fantastic. The food had already been put away, so Jesse was disappointed by that, but he got some kybassa at the Kyiv pavilion earlier.

On the bus ride home, I spent some time asking/telling high school kids to put their cigarettes out while we were on the bus. After saying loudly “PLEASE PUT YOUR CIGARETTES OUT!” the bus driver pulled over and I fingered a few of the culprits who had hid it in the mean time, but he didn’t do anything except yell for a second and glare at them for a few more. If he’d tossed even a couple off the bus it would have fixed the problem organically. Naturally, the chain smoking junkies lit up again within 5 minutes. At least I had an open-window seat with some air.

The Chilean pavilion had a punch drink that was a lot like sangria - it was good. The prices for bottled water varied though from place to place ($2 at Chile, and $1.50 elsewhere), and few of the pavilions had drinking fountains available, which is kind of sad. I spent way too much on food (like last year, only less this time), but it’s a once a year kind of thing, and the travel cost can’t be beat, even with the smoke filled night buses. The German pavilion had the biggest dinner for the best price, and I bumped into Nicole who I’d never met before, but have spoken with through blogs for a couple years now.

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Here are some very funny pie charts. I think I could come up with a few more like some of these.