Wednesday, May 8, 2013 If American billionaire Richard Kinder, gets his way, oil tanker traffic will increase to some 400 tankers per year through Vancouver's Burrard Inlet.

Canada once had a vibrant manufacturing sector, growing economy and about 20 oil tankers per year passing through Burrard Inlet in B.C., mostly delivering refined products to coastal communities. Today, Canada has a declining manufacturing sector, growing unemployment, and over 70 crude oil tankers per year transiting Burrard Inlet. What happened?

The tar sands happened. Canada took the lure of globalization and raw resource export. Over a decade ago, the world's largest oil companies decided to exploit the black bitumen tar buried under Alberta's boreal forest, and to ship it from Canada with minimal local economic benefit.

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While the Conservatives continue to sign bilateral investment treaties (BITs, or FIPAs in Canada's case) that give corporations the "right" to challenge or block policies they don't like, Latin American countries are working together to change the system entirely.

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At rabble.ca we get a lot of visitors -- up to 450,000 a month, and we have over 18,000 Twitter followers. That’s a lot of folks. Who are you? In 2011 we had a visitors' survey and now we are doing it again. We are hoping to get 100 more people responding so we have opened the survey back up until May 20. Yes, you can still get prizes! We are offering Canadian music CD prize packs, rabble tote bags, or some rockin' bike lights.  Congratulations to Marion P., Jody S., Beth L., and Chris C. who have won already!

Our survey just takes a few minutes and can be found here:

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We have been surprised, to say the least, at the lack of public discourse around health care during this election period. As a top-of-mind issue for British Columbians, you'd think it would be as central as the always large and looming economy. So what are the burning issues in health care, and how do the party platforms stack up? Here's our take, with a particular focus on seniors.

The challenge:

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On this week's episode of Talking Radical Radio, Tamara Lorincz of Halifax talks about the campaign she has been spearheading in opposition to the $25 billion contract awarded to a shipyard in her city to build warships for the Canadian navy.

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May 8, 2013 antifragile.jpg

Your name is Damocles. The king of the realm has forced you to sit at an elegant table in his castle and consume a sumptuous meal. The monarch has suspended a gleaming sword, tied to the ceiling by a single hair from a horse's tail, over your head. At any moment the blade, like fate itself, can end your life. You are fragile.

Erase this Greek-Roman myth from your mind. Now your name is Phoenix. You are a bird of a magnificent colour. Each time that you are annihilated you re-emerge from your own ashes. Any person or force that destroys you simply enables you to re-incarnate back to your original state. You have no fear of the unknown. You are robust.

In his newest bestseller, Anti-Fragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb utilizes myths to illustrate three types of exposure to the unpredictable. The Black Swan: Part 1 In his provocative book The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out that human beings, and especially economists, regularly misinterpret reality. Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis This piece revisits Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis, a statement by Catholic bishops that shook the country 30 years ago. The myth of American resilience The truth about America is that it is anything but flexible and resilient and faces a range of obstacles that portend decline rather than a creative re-birth that will re-establish its supremacy.

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This month's Indie Inside features The Caravan song 'What up Steve?' Indie Inside: The Caravan

Citizen science is a growing movement that’s joining professional scientists with regular people around the world. Together, they’re expanding scientific knowledge and giving us all a better understanding of the world we live in. Western University’s masters in journalism class are exploring this emerging movement. 

This episode looks at how citizen science and citizen journalism differ and what they can learn from one another. How can citizen scientists and citizen journalists collaborate to get the general public interested in science?

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Am I the only one who sees irony in the leader of Alberta's ultra-conservative Wildrose Party working up a full head of steam because the merely very conservative government of Premier Alison Redford plans to mail a colourful budget brochure to every household in the province -- at taxpayer expense, of course?

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If the NDP is elected, they say they will increase the basic rate for single, employable people by $20.  Activists say this will do nothing to address the issue of poverty in the province. Bill Hopwood is an organizer with Raise the Rates.  He speaks with Redeye host Mordecai Briemberg.

 

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My parents lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s and were profoundly affected by it. They taught us to work hard to earn a living, live within our means, save for tomorrow, share and not be greedy and help our neighbours because one day we might need their help. Those homilies and teachings seem quaint in today’s world of credit cards, hyper-consumption and massive debt.

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Wednesday, May 8, 2013 A look at what citizen journalism can tell us about citizen science.

A group of 36 students in Western University's Master of Arts in Journalism class has spent three months studying and reporting on citizen science. Over the past three weeks we have been sharing our citizen science stories -- how it emerged and evolved, where it stands now and where it's going. This is the final feature article in this series. Visit our Citizen Science page to read previous articles. 

John Keefe knew the cicadas were coming. He knew swarms of them would emerge from their burrows in the eastern United States this spring after 17 years underground, and he knew that would be a story worth telling.

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Student unions and the campus press are two things that go together like a spark to gasoline. When it's done right you can take the energy and use it to propel the best interests of students as far as possible. When it's done wrong it can lead to everybody getting badly burned.

 The campus press in Canada has its origins in the student union movement as students found they had to have a way to raise student issues that weren't covered by the mainstream media.

This is still very much the case. In fact, with the daily newspapers cutting back on their newsroom staff dedicated education reporters are becoming harder to find.

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A decade ago a friend of mine spent a summer apprenticing as a page in the National Assembly of Québec during the time that Thomas Mulcair served as Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment, and Parks in the government of Jean Charest.

He described vividly how opposition Parti Québécois deputies were terrified of Mulcair. His encyclopedic knowledge, searing intellect and brilliant rhetorical gifts could shred a careless opponent. His nickname at the time, The Grizzly, reflected that approach. This was no Winnie the Pooh or Panda -- tangling with Mulcair could leave an opponent seriously mauled.

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Last year telecom giant Bell unleashed a new $3.4B plan to take control of Astral Media, one of Canada’s largest media companies. Canada has one of the most highly concentrated media systems in the industrialized world, and this deal would only make this situation worse by giving Bell a monopolistic share of the media market.

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Tuesday, May 7, 2013 It's important to look at how Stephen Harper and the federal Conservatives have responded so far, and what further action they might take in the future.

Last week, the National Post's Christie Blatchford wrote about Canada's response to the alleged Al Qaeda-linked terror plot to derail a Via Rail passenger train.

In the piece, she referenced Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz's fist-pump inducing speech at Fenway Stadium in which he told fans that, "This is our fucking city, and nobody gonna dictate our freedom."

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Since we got first involved in the Downtown Eastside Local Area Planning Process (LAPP) in the spring of 2011, low-income community members and groups have been hanging our hopes for broad-sweeping housing policy change on the outcome of the 2013 B.C. provincial election. The most important part of our participation in that planning work has been our push to prevent a mass displacement and homelessness crisis in the DTES.

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As I discussed in an earlier post, Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian and author of numerous bad books about economics, is prone to writing and saying completely ignorant things, making one wonder about the intellectual heft of so-called academic "stars" who populate our institutions of higher learning.

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As others have noted, last week's Ontario budget combined modest social investments in areas requested by the NDP with austerity for overall expenditures. Ontario program spending, already the lowest per capita of any province, will be subject to ongoing cuts relative to inflation.

This paradox on the expenditure side of the ledger reflects a vacuum on the revenue side. The budget's summary of tax measures (Table 4.1) is essentially a blank slate, particularly if one excludes measures that simply parallel federal changes.

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France's National Assembly and Senate have voted to extend the country's military intervention in Mali. A resolution passed both houses of parliament on April 22. Not a single vote was cast in opposition.

Three days later, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 2100, creating a policing mission beginning July 1, 2013. The mission is called by its French acronym MINUSMA. Its projected size is 11,200 soldiers and 1,440 police.

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