It saddens me to see so many journalist, would be political candidate and their relatives killed in the Philippines as they accompany a convoy traveling to file an application to run for governor in a local provincial election. Women were reportedly raped also. Election violence have been a staples of Philippine democracy. Since the world renown People Power overthrew the Marcos dictatorship, Philippine’s road to democracy have been a tumultuous one. It has been mired in corruption, warlordism, election fraud and political killings – some of the same ingredients that lead to the failure of democracy in China, giving way to rise of Communism in that country.

The fact that this massacre is garnering international condemnation would help shone a spotlight on the violent political culture that exist in that country. Maintaining Democracy is hard work. Unfortunately Philippine have a long way to go to overcome all the hurdles a young democracy faces.  International condemnation would help pressure the Philippine government to do something and not treat this as business as usual.

News Source and Related Article : Christian Science Monitor Global News Blog

Associated press have a more graphic detail account of the massacre.

ABC’s new V series is drawing controversy on its depiction of Alien promoting Hope, change and Universal Health Care and drawing brainwashed supporter caught in “Visitor” (V) mania. Blogs on the web are drawing parallel between the new series and Obama mania. But I am sure the series is not trying to suggest Obama is actually a Lizard bound on destroying humans. Because that would be so unoriginal and stealing a page from Fox News talking point.

The government’s argument for privatizing AECL does not add up. They claimed they are trying to save Canada’s nuclear industry but refuse to put in a condition that the buyer, who could be AECL’s competitor, can’t decide to get rid of CANDU after buying it. They claim Canada is not competitive internationally while contracts are being signed in China, who is expected to be one of the world’s largest market for new reactor build. China already uses CANDU technology and was happy with the on time and on budget completion of the projects. This weekend, international news is talking about deal being work out by AECL and India’s 3 utilities. So imagine all this expected influx of profit in the near future from new nuclear plant going to foreign companies or whichever private firms buy AECL. A likely scenario is Areva or its major competitors buy it just to get rid of the competitor.

An AECL scientist said:

“Historically, whenever you sell a technology to a foreign country, you lose it,”

The government want to sell off the only division at AECL that has large potential to see huge profit in the near future (the Nuclear plant division) while retaining the research division. But that’s not the end of it. The research division will be contracted out. Based on past contract related scandal, contracting out the research division open up huge potential for corruption. Haliburton, Sponsorship Scandal, the “billion dollar with nothing to show for it” Ontario’s Health Contract are just few of the latest and most prominent scandal. Contracting out work especially when it involves research just does not make sense unless you are a lobbyist of contracting firm.

AECL would do better if they are left alone without constant political interference and constantly changing executive officials made up of political appointee of which ever political party happens to be ruling at that time. We can have the brightest scientist and engineers but if the upper management who are indebted to politicians, who are in turn indebted to their campaign contributor, is constantly reorganizing and restructuring the company, then it won’t matter. Politicians who constantly sell profitable or soon to be profitable division (like Mulroney selling off medical isotope division profit to Nordion) to private firms, then public funds will just continue to be wasted.

Harper’s government claim AECL need to be commercialized. But with Canada’s energy future at stake, can we just simply dumb down the value of scientific research to how much profit we can make right now? What’s more troubling is there’s enough evidence that the expected and inevitable nuclear renaissance, and the foothold AECL’s CANDU already have in China and India – two potentially biggest market in the near future, are about to provide AECL with influx of rich revenue. But the government is now rushing to privatize them? This same division is also where AECL get most of its profit right now with the continuous contract in refurbishment of Canada’s nuclear plant fleet.

Privatize the revenue generating division and contract out research division? Make sense for private company looking to make profit but does not make sense if you care about Canadian interest and its future international reputation in research and technology. So taxpayer would be left with a totally profitless crown corporation and paying more to contracting firm.

For now, Harper is keeping a tight lid on the privatization plan for AECL.

Another disgusting Fox’s news conduct hit the spotlight. I think this is the third Fox’s related conduct that I have blog in about a month. h/t  “Dammit Janet” blog.

Fox notorious commentator Limbaugh claim he is not racist. But apparently CNN and some blog reviewed his past comments and revealed lots of racist comment being made. Some of the comments as enumerated by mediamatters.org are:

Obama is “more African in his roots than he is American” and is “behaving like an African colonial despot.”

Latching onto LA Times op-ed, Limbaugh sings “Barack, The Magic Negro.” (and repeated it 27 times in one show).

Limbaugh suggests Obama would not have acted on Somali pirates if he’d known they were “actually young, black Muslim teenagers.”

Limbaugh called illegal immigrants an “invasive species.”

Limbaugh repeatedly calls Native Americans “Injuns.” (an offensive term / slur against Native American).

British Guardian gave a scathing criticism of Limbaugh’s racist comments. Including racist comment about NFL players (which have lots of black players). On another instance, Limbaugh claim there’s a media conspiracy to favor black quarterback. All of this is coming back to haunt him as NFL rejected his bid to buy the NFL team Ram.  The article indicated that NFL owners, players and administrator are now shunning Limbaugh. The Guardian sport blog refers to Limbaugh and American talk show as:

Suffice to say they are a wicked crew, given to the same level of self-doubt and basic decency as a fox in a chicken coup….. in a community of mean-spirited pygmies, no one is intellectually smaller than Rush Limbaugh.

Harper awarded close to a billion dollar to Alberta to go toward the untested carbon-capture project. Up to $2 billion have been set aside with half of that going to Shell’s project. This is nothing but a sideshow that does not really address the environmental pollution issue. Instead it literally buried the pollution in the ground with no clear scientific study done on it. Guess what else is under ground that these pollutants could seep into. Our drinking water! While nuclear waste storage have to undergo very stringent regulation and scientific study to ensure the storage site won’t result in migration of the waste, the carbon-capture have no such study and research. It only helps keep the oil and coal industry alive and divert the much needed effort to push toward clean energy. In fact $343 million is being taken from the clean energy fund.

(Latest news on carbon-capture billion dollar handout: Feds Pledge another $779 million for Carbon-Capture)

This comes amid controversy over Harper’s continued use of taxpayer money to fund partisan advertisement and his MP have been caught by the opposition with handing out taxpayers fund to their constituent replacing the Government of Canada logo with Conservative logo. It’s good for Harper to keep his distant now. Whether he has prior knowledge or not, his past actions have made his MP think these actions are ok. Prior to this incident, the normally non partisan Government of Canada website were being plastered with Harper’s picture and the red color changed to Conservative blue. Pro-Conservative campaign style ad were paid for with taxpayers fund.

It’s so nice of them to waste taxpayer’s money at a time of deep economic difficulty.

h/t to the blog: Peace, order and good government eh?

Canada’s position on Climate change have caused a mass walkout of the group of 77 nations gathering in Thailand to tackle the environmental issue. Read the above blog or this Canadian Press (CP) article for more detail.

Canadian Press : Canadian position prompts walk-out by developing countries at climate talks.

Surprisingly, this is not being reported in Canada’s main stream media’s website (last I checked October 12 9:43pm EST). Did not know there’s self censorship here. Perhaps to avoid embarrassing ourselves?

White house is no longer even bothering to be politically correct or diplomatic about the “Republican Communication and Research Arm” Fox News. Fox News, owned by Murdoch – a well known hard core Bush supporter, have been on the offensive against Obama even going as far as to accuse him of being racist and hating white people.  (related article: New York Daily News).

This is just another chapter in the days of the disgusting outlet who call itself a news organization.  In my past blog, I have featured a video from Huffington Post and CNN showing how Fox distort news. (Link to my previous blog here >> Evidence of Fox Distortion Exposed in Media War.)

As incidence of dust storm increase in frequency, not only in China and Australia but now also in U.S., scientist are reporting that dust storm are usually linked to outbreak of diseases. This weekend, Washington state dust storm caused pileup on the highway forcing its closure. It has just been re-opened today. Dust storm are reported to carry bacteria, viruses and fungal spores and its minute particle when inhaled are harmful to human’s respiratory system, even without the disease carrying organism.

Japanese observed that in one incident, large amount of dust (800,000 tonnes) was pickup from China’s desert and carried twice around the world. This indicate that one country’s problem, e.g. deforestation, could affect people in other parts of the world. China have recently announced a big project of planting lots of trees to mitigate climate change and sand storm problem.

Source: Guardian.co.uk article

But aside from the ominous news about the harmfulness of dust storm, scientist are also looking at the benefits to marine life and possibly carbon capture (nothing to do with the carbon capture farce for coal power plant). The iron content in dust storm is believed to be leading to a boom in ocean’s algae,  a valuable food source for marine life and big absorber of CO2. Personally, it seems surreal to me that some scientist are thinking of artificially injecting iron into the ocean to produce algae in hope that it would absorb the CO2 produced by our excessive use of fuel. I think in this case, the saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” applies.

Speaking of prevention, electric car is coming to China and that country plan to offer incentives on top of their already heavy investment for helping research and development of electric car. BYD of China will be rolling out their electric vehicle by the end of this year.  Here in Canada, other than tax breaks being offered by Ontario, the federal government have no plans and are happy to drag their feet on this and have even scaled back funding for scientific research and universities.  A Canadian manufacturer of  electric car (Zenn) got zero support from Canadian government. The government deem it  unsafe even in 50 km/h rural road (citing its 40 km/h limit). The Zenn passed U.S. regulation but are prevented from selling here.  So they are unable to sell to Canadians and have to rely on customers abroad. Meanwhile, bicycles are legally allowed on the road. Albeit, a lot of people are still unaware that bicycle have right to full lane, but that’s another story.

Sadly, Zenn is now pulling the plug on their electric vehicle. Back in 2007, the founder have blamed Federal government for putting a road block and preventing their sale here in Canada.

It’s interesting to see Fox unravel. Although biasness of Fox is obvious to most of us, it has never been this obvious. It seems like the trigger might be Fox ad claiming the other networks was not at the anti-Obama 9/12 tea party protest. The network hit back and now there’s a viral video circulating showing Fox producer staging and directing the protesters. CNN was fuming at Fox lying about CNN not covering the protest. CNN then showed their tower cam shot with a  Canadian flag that was used as the picture on Fox ad. I guess they got use to getting away with lying and got too greedy.  There is a need to put an end to shameless lying and incitement of hate by neo-right wing group like Murdoch’s Fox’s. CTV and Globe and Mail should take note.

Here’s the youtube video of CNN exposing Fox’s organizing the rally (a video first exposed by Huffington Post):

The election of the first black president in the U.S. might be causing racial tension to resurface. There’s almost a sense of panic and paranoia in U.S. that Obama is driving them to ruin. Something unseen of even during the presidency of Bush. This leads to yelling match and boorishness across the U.S. culminating in Rep. Joe Wilson yelling and interrupting a speech of the President. The loss of civility in congress align the U.S. Congress closer to past Taiwanese parliament where congressmen physically assault each other.  Today, Jimmy Carter stated what was on the back of a lot of people’s mind, especially black people. That Wilson outburst would not have happened if Obama is not black. Carter claimed it was an act based on racism and rooted in fears of a black president.

Meanwhile, Kanye West outburst, interrupting Taylor Swift acceptance speech to claim Beyonce should have won, is raising some question as to whether this was another racial paranoia on Kanye West part. The victim mentality or feeling that a black woman who deserve to win have been robbed of her award in favor of a white woman.

There’s even consternation that Obama’s advisers are all white. So the big celebration after Obama was elected and the proclamation that America can finally put their ugly racial history behind seems premature. The cancer created by racist of old days and present day runs deep. U.S. seems to have been infected with Fox News culture, where yelling and drowning out people who have different opinion is a norm. Where outrageous lie are spoken without a blink of an eye.  LA Times call it a deepening social dysfunction.

But this phenomena is not limited to our neighbour to the south. Civility in Canada’s parliament has gone downhill since Stephen Harper adopted a yelling, insult and smear filled parliamentary session. If we let the neo-Conservative gang with the like of Bush, Howard, Fox and Harper go on their ways without censure, then the noisy minority would have their ways. Harper is obviously borrowing a page from former Australia’s PM Howard and have been caught delivering exactly the same speech as Howard. Civility, honesty and ethics be damn. Just tap in to people’s worse fear and prejudice. Divide and Conquer.