Food Subsidies Important Compliment to Canadian Agriculture

When I shop for meat and vegetables, I look first for local, organic and home grown rather than supporting the USDA beef from feed lots or pesticide laden, enhanced products from abroad.  Remember too, that in season foods are fresher.  Buying spinach, for example, can be tricky when the source is California, where water is scarce and dirt may be on the leaves which means it's possible to get diseases from poor cleaning.  Similarly, openly displayed bean sprouts carry huge amounts of bacteria for those who eat it raw. 

But it's getting harder to get Ontario grown foods in the supermarkets, and indeed, we're being encouraged through lower prices of foreign imports to buy more out of country foods.  Wallmart is undercutting local prices and can afford to thrown away spoiled goods which green grocers cannot.  But I have a rabbit and chickens that are quite happy to get scraps; being frugal and conscious of waste, I often take day olds for volume freezing and soup bases. 

So, that's my outlook and I wish that mainstream papers would cover these views much more that simply pushing the big business interests.  Read the comments of the Star and Globe to see how we're not being served by Canadian agricultural policies.

The US agricultural sector has always been massively subsidised so this is not a problem caused by Obama but by the Mulroney government in the first place agreeing to NAFTA and allowing our agricultural products, not covered by "supply management" to be wiped out by subsidised US goods. Try finding Canadian made food products in your local supermarket. US subsidised agriculture especially corn and corn based fructose has wiped out mexican farmers , many of whom as an unintended consequence are now illegal immigrants to the US trying to make a living. Supply management makes some products more expensive for the consumer but getting rid of them will make us entirely dependednt on the US food supply and then watch prices rise.

Dangers of Bill C30 Misuse by Harper's Conservative Spying

Anyone who reads the national newspapers and writes a blog or posts comments online via twitter or facebook already knows the sockpuppets, strawman sockpuppets and meatpuppets that troll your content.

Harper's bully boys have been called out as shills for overposting on any issue that doesn't back a point of view on the Con party agenda.  They work like spammers.  Check out the regularity of their posts.

click on posters name to view posting frequency.

Anyone who posts each minute is using the platform as a forum conversation to steer perception towards a view in line with their party affiliation and may be a shill.  But to be fair, in the messages to the user section, one can see that a real discussion by readers furthers the conversation.

Users post rebuttals or agreement

There are, however, abusers of the comments section who can trail your i.d. and send messages via your facebook, twitter, blog account.  The Globe's policy is not to delete comments because once posted, they become part of the public record.  Legally, they are protecting themselves before you.  So be careful not to say any slanderous comments.

One type of spam or malware is called clickjacking.  The whole interactivity of the net leaves spying, malicious endangerment of your accounts and misuse wide open.  If we had a government oversight that worked ethically, there wouldn't be a concern.  We'd feel protected.  By the Harper government spies, lies, tampers with the poll results, phones voters to lie to them.  You know what Rob Ford does to whistleblowers. The list goes on.  Now bill C30 will make it even easier to knock us down for good.

If you doubt how nefarious the gatekeeping of information can be, then check out what search giant Google has been up to by crossing the line of fairness.  Look up #search neutrality, #google bombing for example.  For Immigrants to Canada, google page rank will push results for "for profit" suppliers of fast tracking into tar sands Alberta.  For CO2 emissions for Alberta or water use, page rank will push results to Cenovus or Capp.  To avoid the industry self promotion paid for information, use Google Scholar.

look at the number of citings for verity of source

You already know how misinformation is destroying public perceptions of climate change, of tar sands, by counter strategies like climate denial and ethical oil propaganda, of NDP or Liberal policies by slander.  See astroturfing.  So in the general sense, we will lose the capability to get truth from the internet through all the noise of misinformation.  Thank goodness for the CBC for its wonderful reporting, Al Jazeera for a non western point of view, and UK Guardian for its science and environmental reporting.

For an example of lack of information on the environment, look at the UN site which would always post information about World Watch Institute.  Underfunding results in statistics not being made available.

If it wasn't for Twitter, I would never have discovered this article by Senator Tom Banks.  You must read it.

The interactivity of the internet also forces us to have to reveal issues we believe in that will be used against us by a corrupt government.  That's why bill C30 is a danger.

Blackberry's Status as Leader is Being Deliberately Underplayed by Feds

A Canadian made product that has been a leader in the world for its standards of superiority in design and use is being squashed by the Conservative policies against our own businesses. Michael Geist, columnist and leading proponent of legal issues regarding the telecommunications industry in Canada points out in his article the completely wrongheaded  path towards economic success for local business that is impacting RIM.  Blackberry is a world class product, yet the press continues to squash its virtues.  Instead, the headlines read a negative bias.  Conservatives hate Canada, the environment, Canadian made goods, the workers who produce here, Ontario and success by our own hands.

Given that RIM remains profitable, it seems premature to suggest that the government can or should do much of anything to assist it. The company faces mounting criticism over its product lines and its failure to address the competitive threats from Apple Inc. and Google Inc. — business issues that lie beyond the expertise or mandate of government policy-makers.  (Geist)

Anyone who thinks that a free, unregulated economy can thrive in an unequal global marketplace is a fool.

While RIM’s current problems can’t be solved by government policy, some of its shortcomings may be a product of Canadian policy. Indeed, RIM is the quintessential Canadian technology company, reflecting the market’s strengths and weaknesses. If the government wants to avoid a Nortel repeat, part of the solution lies in addressing the problems that plague Canadian telecom policy. 

Caterpillar.  Yes, you know it.  There is an unwritten but very visible tendency to push our economy down to meet the market of corporations not placed in Canada.  Canada is open for business to plunder, to dominate.  It's easier for government to walk away from responsibilities to respond to its voters.  Corporations can lobby directly to the government, are easily satisfied with moving the agenda of WTO global interests forward.

RIM was never shy about trumpeting its perceived competitive advantages. For years, co-founder Mike Lazaridis promoted the data efficiency of RIM’s BlackBerry, while emphasizing that wireless spectrum is a finite resource. From RIM’s perspective, efficient use of data makes its devices more attractive to wireless carriers, which incur lower costs when compared with bandwidth-hogging devices such as the Apple iPhone.

Unless you buy an unlocked phone and are a nerdy geek who knows how to circumvent the phone company drain on your pocket, you'll be paying big money to run your business.  Another way in which Canadians cannot be competitive is our slavery to the telecoms.  More money for Rogers and Bell.  And by business writing it off, it's really a subsidy to those companies, just like gas expenses for business.

The emphasis on spectrum scarcity and the value of currying favour with telecom carriers is very much a product of the Canadian marketplace. Bell, Rogers, and Telus dominate our wireless market, resulting in longer consumer contracts than those found elsewhere, among the highest roaming fees in the world and expensive wireless data costs. Moreover, the government has retained foreign investment restrictions in the telecom sector long after most other developed economies dropped them, and it is years behind the United States in conducting spectrum auctions that could yield new competitors.

The deliberate crap contract plans by these big three just underline how dishonest the whole business is.  Who can cut through that constant blabbergab of nonsense, their use of voicemail, outsourcing of calls for tech support, their poor customer relations.  All these are signs of a business model that only works one way.  That they don't care because they don't have to compete.  That we are stuck with being irrelevant slaves to their product.

Buy Canadian. 
Demand an end to the CRTC cronyism to the Conservative government ownership of telecommunications.
Realize that if you feel like you're being screwed by the gov and your phone product - you are. 

twitter:  @mgeist

Wikipedia Entry on Vic Toews Edited on Open Record Details

A twitter post and blogger pointed out that the wikipedia entry on Vic Toews was altered and wondered why parts were deleted for no good reason.  Here's what the previous version removed.

Early life and career

Toews' parents, Victor and Anna Toews, moved from Canada with their two eldest children to Paraguay in 1952, where Toews was born in Filadelfia, Paraguay. Victor's father served on a missions assignment as a teacher and minister. The family returned to Canada in 1956. He speaks German (his mother tongue), Spanish and English.^[2] He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from theUniversity of Winnipeg (1973), and a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Manitoba (1976).^[3] He joined the provincial Ministry of Justice in 1976 and became a Crown attorney the following year. He was promoted to Director of Constitutional Law for Manitoba in 1987, and advised the Manitoba government on the Meech Lake Accord.^[4] He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1991.^[5]

Toews became a lecturer at the University of Manitoba in 1987, and taught classes in labour law and employment law. He left the civil service in 1991 to become an associate counsel for Great-West Life Assurance, and was given a leave of absence in 1995 to enter politics.^[6]

To access previous revisions, one must be a registered user, fill out the form for the dates and year for the search.  All edits are traced either user name or IP address.  My reason for looking was that I knew there might be an issue of dual citizenship and whether that might have been the reason for the delete.  The current version is here.  The greatest difference is regarding political history and less emphasis on early private history.  I believe the edits were made by an active wiki writer who goes by the name of Bearcat. 

This is the current revision of this page, as edited by Bearcat (talk | contribs) at 19:54, 20 February 2012. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this version.

(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

 Sorry, this is not a more interesting spy novel plot with my uncovering the RCMP playing games through my stellar sleuthing.  There is no plot to hide a secret cabal of intrigue.  Just a followup of a question.

Electric Cars - Change for the Better in Ontario

Canadians ready for electric

Ontario roads and streets are dingy, pot holed filled around many parts of the city at this time of the year due in a large part to the excessive trucking of merchandise coming from the border.  Thanks to the push to sell cheaper and cheaper from state side without support for local economies and jobs.  Congestion is costing Ontario billions.

Living close to the QEW, the smog of diesel vehicles is growing with no end as is congestion in the corridor.  There's no easy answer for living in an urban megalopolis to deal with congestions,  but there is a chain of responsibility with regard to oversight and cost of implementing change that needs looking at.  See the discussion on the Agenda here for excellent analysis.  Our car mess is a federal responsibility.

My quick 3 solutions are:
light rail must be a transport method for heavy goods
  Ontario must push for local electric car manufacture and infrastructure,
 and municipally, we ought to have bike lanes.  Cycling to work is an urban trend in Toronto and growing.  But clearly, electric bikes and bikes need to have designated separated roadways.

Time for a switch to electric, especially in big transport and alternative shipping to light rail.

We also need to move to production of electric for car makers with heavier costs to gas driven vehicles in the form of taxation.  LNG and Canadian made Peterbuilt trucks are a good move towards lowering emissions amongst other toxins.  All UPS, FedEx and courier vehicles should be run electric or LNG.  They ought to be Canadian built and locally serviced and parts manufactured.  Fewer shopping trips for price comparisons and retail therapy might lessen the need for mega malls, wallmart sized parking lots and the encroachment of land space for crap plastic consumption.

Canadian Conservative Government and Cruelty to Animals Survey

Climate Gate and Climate Deniers - Followers in Canada

One might think we are living in medieval times when it comes to our attitude to global warming.  So many variations of opinion are muddying current understanding that each view may be as bizarre as the next if one reads the background on the climate wars through the prism of each viewer.  Nobel laureate scientists,  environmentalists, climate deniers, geoengineerers are fighting either to close debate or are working under the radar to make changes for us.

Climate deniers say environmentalists are using scientists to instill fear about global warming in order to perpetuate political control.   Environmentalists are blaming climate deniers for being lobbyists for big oil.  And big money philanthropists, the ones least spoken about in the media, are making environment change with hocus pocus wizardry.

Climategate is the neologism for a politically motivated, special interest group that is making a concerted, organized campaign against the scientifically proven and very clearly exhibited warming of our planet that is caused by human activity.  A third thinks that the solution is to manage the weather or look for another planet.  Each points a finger of "crazy" at the other.

To look for yourself, see the three opposing viewpoints.

U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
Geoengineering

The first website considers the dangerous repercussions caused by over development and examines the scientific evidence of changing environment including warming, weather patterns, extreme weather, melting ice at the poles.  The second emphasizes a magical thinking view that nature has its own means of self regulation and that over time there have been similar fluctuations in global temperature extremes.  The site is a parody of the first at the outset, but the scientific (alchemist) examinations of CO2 emissions are written by scientists with dubious respectability in the field. The third uses science to make nature predictable and changeable.

Funders for the deniers are amongst the big oil philanthropic duo Koch Brothers and Microsoft's Bill Gates Corporation for geoengineering.  The media spin on Gates' donations say that he offered computers to this endeavour.  The reporter didn't corroborate or investigate the truth of that, but it is easily disproven.

Geoengineering is opposed by many environmentalists, who say the technology could undermine efforts to reduce emissions, and by developing countries who fear it could be used as a weapon or by rich countries to their advantage. In 2010, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity declared a moratorium on experiments in the sea and space,except for small-scale scientific studies.

Why GeoEngineering poses the most threat to global warming
The least covered aspect of science about climate change deals with geoengineering.  Most opposition to climate manipulation comes from the countries most immediately affected, like Brazil and Africa.  Brazil has the most resources and internet capacity to campaign against it.

An IceRocket search will provide adequate background for the pros and cons, an example follows.  Note the page rank and number of references for its veracity.

Chemtrails Global Jan 27th 2012 // science

3 days ago by Rusty

... the following video compilation is an accurate depiction of what is happening, this is an important historical/scientific document relying on primary sources and hard data rather than selectively chosen scientific papers funded by the billion dollar foundations and organisations who funded geoengineering ...

AirCrap.org - aircrap.org · Rank: 15,478 · 22 references

How is Canada an important player in Geoengineering? 
Our wide open spaces, tundra, arctic and controlled through suppression Aboriginal population (key opposition) make it possible.  Another location is the atmosphere and the oceans.  However, the secret document at the end of this post lists not the Canadian indigenous peoples but Madagascar as a group to be consulted.  What follows are snippets from the 82 page document.

As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology. Branson, who has frequently called for geoengineering to combat climate change, helped fund the Royal Society's inquiry into solar radiation management last year through hisCarbon War Room charity. It is not known how much he contributed.

Professors David Keith, of Harvard University, and Ken Caldeira of Stanford, [see footnote] are the world's two leading advocates of major research into geoengineering the upper atmosphere to provide earth with a reflective shield. They have so far received over $4.6m from Gates to run the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research(Ficer). Nearly half Ficer's money, which comes directly from Gates's personal funds, has so far been used for their own research, but the rest is disbursed by them to fund the work of other advocates of large-scale interventions.

According to statements of financial interests, Keith receives an undisclosed sum from Bill Gates each year, and is the president and majority owner of the geoengineering company Carbon Engineering, in which both Gates and Edwards have major stakes – believed to be together worth over $10m.

Another Edwards company, Canadian Natural Resources, has plans to spend $25bn to turn the bitumen-bearing sand found in northern Alberta into barrels of crude oil. Caldeira says he receives $375,000 a year from Gates, holds a carbon capture patent and works for Intellectual Ventures, a private geoegineering research company part-owned by Gates and run by Nathan Myhrvold, former head of technology at Microsoft.

The continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases has profound implications for global and regional average temperatures, and also precipitation, ice-sheet dynamics, sea-level rise, ocean acidification and the frequency and magnitude of extreme events. Future climatic perturbations could be abrupt or irreversible, and potentially extend over millennial time scales; they will inevitably have major consequences for natural and human systems, severely affecting biodiversity and incurring very high socio-economic costs (Section 3.1). (from Canadian Natural Resources.)

Enhanced weathering on land however will have clear local impacts as it requires large mining areas and associated transport infrastructure. In addition, the mineral resources required will only be available in certain locations, therefore reducing the opportunity for choosing between alternative sites. Based on historical experience, large mining activities could have serious social implications. In addition, land space is needed for weathering to happen. 

Second, the distribution of impacts of geo-engineering are not likely to be even or uniform as are the impacts of climate change itself. Regarding impacts on climate, this appears to be mainly an issue arising from SRM. Regarding other impacts, CDR could have local and possibly also regional impacts that could raise distributional issues. Such impacts are explored below in this chapter. Where distributional effects arise, this raises questions about how the uneven impacts can be addressed for instance through proper governance mechanisms.

Third, as with climate change, geo-engineering could also entail intergenerational issues. As a result of possible technological “lock in”, future generations might be faced with the need to maintain geo-engineering measures in general in order to avoid impacts of climate change. This mainly has been identified as an issue for SRM. However, it is also conceivable that CDR-techniques entail similar “lock in” effects depending on emission trajectories. Conversely, it could be argued that not pursuing further research on geo-engineering could limit future generations’ options for reducing climate risk. 

How does one sort through the smog of climate reality?


Follow the money trail to see who is being secretive about their funding and documentation.  Documents disclosing the strategies of climate deniers were sent anonymously to DeSmogBlog and can be read in full by following the links here.

These documents are available over at DeSmogBlog. Several people are going over them, and so far they appear legit. You can read some relevant discussions at DeSmogBlog, Deep Climate, Planet 3, Greg Laden, ClimateCrocks, Shawn Otto, and Think Progress. John Mashey at DeSmogBlog has more info that also corroborates the leaked documents, and to call it blistering is to severely underestimate it.

 How do you know if the media is showing bias?
You might be able to spot deniers or the effect of their propaganda in several ways.  Media  qualifying their remarks by such provisos as attributing a point of view to one organization like the Suzuki Foundation or Greenpeace, thereby branding it with the "wingnut" slander or "lefty" tar brush (wink understood).

Why is there so little science news?
Science is being muzzled by governments world wide in order to maintain a status quo.  We never hear about the impact of oil and gas on the environment, toxics, climate, air, water, food supplies, from scientists in Canada unless the information is filtered.

Science, one of the world’s top research journals, published Miller’s findings in January. The journal considered the work so significant it notified “over 7,400″ journalists worldwide about Miller’s “Suffering Salmon” study. Science told Miller to “please feel free to speak with journalists.” It advised reporters to contact Diane Lake, a media officer with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Vancouver, “to set up interviews with Dr. Miller.”

Obama has made attempts to restore science to its rightful place, while our government has completely reversed all our free speech on environment.  We must agitate to have more news stories on environment and science in newspapers, more scientists in federal agencies.  Why control science?  visibility, media,

Advanced Science Serving Society will be holding a meeting in B.C. this week on the issue of why governments control science, its visibility and media gatekeeping.  Let's see how it is covered and who addresses the story well.