There are some very interesting links to explore today. I hope you made some time available to browse.
The UK is also experiencing strange weather, and there are photos and a hashtag to explore.
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An excellent summary of the oil news tearing up the newspapers in Canada this week. The comprehensive and easy to read storyline of how the oil/political landscape is right now, is need-to-know to understand incestuous Canadian Conservative politics and the oil lobby.
You may have heard of “Ethical Oil”? It’s a phrase coined by Ezra Levant, a convicted libeler, former and current media failure, and author of “Ethical Oil” the book. Oh yay. Hear Ethical Oil defended on the CBC. My opinion is that it’s the next “Clean Coal” which no one is talking about anymore because it doesn’t really exist, and it’s a really stupid catch phrase with loads of irony that burns. Next up, expect “Sweet Gas”, “Cold Fission”, or “Beautiful Butane”.
This painful video interview of Kathryn Marshall on CBC tells you all you need to know about the ethics behind the oily lobby group acting on behalf of Enbridge and foreign oil companies involved in the Tar Sands.
Do you know how Canada exploited Chinese people over the last century and a half, first using their labour to build our railways, and then everything else in our dollar stores? Well, payback’s a bitch, they say.
Last summer, John Bruk, the Asia Pacific Foundation’s founding president, warned that Ottawa was ignoring the rapid emergence of Chinese government interests “in sheep’s clothing” taking over Canada’s natural resource industries. Bruk told B.C. Business magazine: “Are we jeopardizing prosperity for our children and grandchildren while putting at risk our economic independence? In my view, this is exactly what is happening.”
As things have turned out, Bruk was more right than he knew.
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When we fail to protect our ecosystem, there will be more people forgotten than ever before. At least there is a great website that will remember their ancestors.
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If you didn’t like these links, I’m sorry. I’m sorry world.
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff 
I have issues with the notion of historical guilt. Looking far enough back in time, every social or political entity called a “state” or “nation” has endured instances of social discrimination and exploitation of a particualr guilt. The Americas was not the first and only, instance of settler colonization that displaced the indeginous inhabitants, neither was the exploitation of Chinese workers without parrallel throughout the annals of history. Highlighting and guilting the West while ignoring injustice in the rest of the world is hypocritical at best and does nothing but rile up animosities that prevent any affirmative action from taking place.
The criteria I would use in making reparations is based on how much an individual or group is suffering or has suffered now and today as a consequence of the past, therefore the problems involving First Nations in this country need immediate attention and a total overhaul of the current system. However, to constantly sulk and moan and create a guilt impasse in the social conciousness of any nation is often counterproductive to actual change.