Tories Announce Announcement

The Harper government announced today, that like previous announcements, this announcement was to announce that next week they will announce that they have an announcement about their Green Plan which will not be a green plan but an anti-smog plan. Details of the plan that were to be announced today, will not be announced till the announcement next week about the announcement pending further consultations.

Harper presses forward with Clean Air Act despite opposition


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Kyoto

Ambrose

Green Plan



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Vancouver Is Green This Time of Year

Which is why the Tories are launching the first part of their Green Plan there. Its the only Green they have in their plan, the background photo op in Stanely Park or wherever.Government expected to launch green environment agenda in Vancouver

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Ambrose

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North Korea Discovers TNT

Was it really a nuclear blast? The actual explosive material has been claimed to be less than 1 kl.tonne and no more than 4 kl.tonnes. Which can be created with conventional TNT. So like their failed missle test was this another fient? A conventional explosion made to appear as a nuclear blast?! To get the US to the bargaining table? That was the case in 2004.





Success, failure or bluff? Scientists pore over data

US intelligence says detected 'sub-kilotonne' blast in North Korea

Success, failure or bluff? Scientists pore over data

Low Yield Of Blast Surprises Analysts

Experts question North Korea's test claim

N Korea N-test more fizz than pop: US agencies





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Disassociative Humour

It's another Duh'O headline....

FDA Approves the First Drug to Treat Irritability Associated with Autism Is that for the caregivers or the autistic person?

The assumption here is that autism is a disease in search of a pharmaceutical cure.

There was an interesting item on Quirks and Quarks on CBC this weekend challenging the assumption that autism is a mental illness needing a cure.



In the big dictionary of mental disorders known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM for short, autism is listed as a mental illness. According to the psychiatric manual, people with autism don't communicate well, have trouble interacting with others, and often have some unusual and repetitive behaviours. Scientists have been very interested in understanding what causes autism -- mostly with an eye to curing it.

Now, two autism researchers in Montreal are arguing that maybe autism isn't something that needs to be cured. Maybe it isn't even a mental disorder.

The two researchers make an unlikely team. One is Dr. Laurent Mottron, a psychiatrist and cognitive neuroscientist at the Riviere-des-Prairies Hospital. He has been studying autism for 25 years. The other is Michelle Dawson, who is autistic. Ms. Dawson has never been to university, but is working at the level of someone with a PhD. For the last couple of years, these two have been collaborating on research into autism. They argue that autism should be recognized as a different way of being human, rather than as a disease or series of defects to be eradicated.

Related Links

Dr. Mottron's webpage and list of publications
The writings of Michelle Dawson
Michelle Dawson's presentation to the Canadian Senate


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Mirror Mirror On The Wall

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Our Lady of Flores Redux

A new update on the hobbit controversy Homo Floresiensis: Two Years Out

I dislike the hobbit dwarf label so,as I have said before since predominately female remains have been identified perhaps the species should have been called Our Lady of Flores.(La nostra signora dei fiori).

"We explore the affinities of LB1 using cranial and postcranial metric and non-metric analyses. LB1 is compared to early Homo, two microcephalic humans, a pygmoid excavated from another cave on Flores, H. sapiens (including African pygmies and Andaman Islanders), Australopithecus, and Paranthropus. Based on these comparisons, we conclude that it is unlikely that LB1 is a microcephalic human, and it cannot be attributed to any known species. Its attribution to a new species, Homo floresiensis, is supported."

One subject that is new is the matter of the tools. Martin et al argue that the tools from 18,000 years ago are not like any simple tool linked to Homo erectus. They are more sophisticated, and have only been associated before with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. The preservation of the tools in the Liang Bua cave, where the fossils were found, suggests to the scientists modern humans coming back again and again to the cave after they arrived on Flores.

But wait for it.....as usual there is contention....Compelling evidence demonstrates that 'Hobbit' fossil does not represent a new species of hominid



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Prison Zoo Complex

Zoos are prisons, captivity of wild animals is torture and a death sentence. And its justification is usually as lame as this .....

Monterey Aquarium's Great White Shark Stirs Controversy, Attracts Crowds; 'Certain Species Don't Do Well in Captivity' Aquarium spokesman, Ken Peterson. He maintains that having a Great White in captivity is ultimately beneficial to the species. "Tens to hundreds of millions of sharks being killed in the wild is a serious conservation problem for the oceans that needs to be addressed. One of the effective vehicles we as a public aquarium have for reaching people, getting them to care about these issues and take action, is to introduce them to live animals."

Capitivity is sure to kill this shark. And the hysterically inaccurate statement that; "hundreds of MILLIONS" are killed in the wild is used to justify the killing of this one shark.

The reality is yes tens of millions are sharks are killed annually and the way to stop that is to stop the Chinese Soup industry.

Imprisoning rare Great White's and assuring them a speeding death has nothing to do with shark slaughter in the wild.

Triple Threat: World Fin Trade May Harvest September 2006
The first real-data study of sharks harvested for their valuable fins estimates as few as 26 million and as many as 73 million sharks are killed each year worldwide—three times higher than was reported originally by the United Nations, according to a paper published as the cover story in the October 2006 edition of Ecology Letters.

“The shark fin trade is notoriously secretive. But we were able tap into fin auction records and convert from fin sizes and weights to whole shark equivalents to get a good handle on the actual numbers,” says lead author Shelley Clarke, Ph.D, an American fisheries scientist based in Hong Kong and Japan.

A team of researchers calculated the number of sharks represented in the fin trade using a unique statistical model and data from Hong Kong traders. When the figures were converted to shark weight, the total is three to four times higher than shark catch figures reported to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Concern about the shark finning trade has grown over the past few years as demand has surged beyond sustainable levels for slow-to-produce shark populations and without regulation in most countries. Three shark species are listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), and 20 percent are threatened with extinction according to the 2006 Red List of Threatened Species.

Used in shark fin soup, a delicacy served at Chinese weddings and other celebrations for centuries and more recently at business dinners in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, fins are the most valuable part of the shark, which typically are sliced off as the shark, sometimes still alive, is thrown back into the ocean. The shark fin trade appears to be keeping pace with the growing demand for seafood—up five percent per year in mainland China.

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Back in the USSR

Slain Russian journalist was writing on torture

Isn't Russian Democracy wonderful.

The difference between Putin and Stalin is the moustache.

Putin's harshest media critics shot dead

Wouldn't George Bush love to be able to that.

But he can't he can only torture.


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Fearmongering

Well our MIA Environment Minister has appeared but not in her shy retiring Dr. Jekyll disguise but as Mrs. Hyde;

- Canadians would see their hydro and natural-gas bills spike dramatically should the three opposition parties succeed in forcing the government to comply with Kyoto, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose warned yesterday.

Fearmongering at the Environment committee meeting, another reason to call for her resignation.

Another reason; she still has no answers.

Ms. Ambrose told the committee she had asked her department to produce the cost estimates to consumers of meeting Canada's Kyoto targets solely through regulation within the country and not including buying of greenhouse-gas credits as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol.

The minister did not explain, however, how her department arrived at its details.

And another reason; she deliberately misreads studies to prove her point when pressed.....

Environment minister angers Washington think tank

An academic from a progressive think tank based in Washington is furious that Environment Minister Rona Ambrose used recent remarks by her to attack the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

Daphne Wysham, a fellow from the Institute for Policy Studies, said Ambrose is using her think tank's criticism of the Clean Development Mechanism to abandon Canada's responsibility to live up to its commitment under the international agreement.

Ambrose made reference to the think tank on Thursday during a parliamentary committee arguing that the mechanism, which allows countries to get credits for investments in developing nations to reduce emissions, had no accountability.

And yet another reason; since they have been in power the emissions of Green House gases have only been matched by the Tories hot air.Canada's greenhouse emissions balloon; EU reports progress

And our final reason;

The Conservative government's plan to introduce a Clean Air Act and begin consultations with the provinces and industry groups is a strategy of delaying its climate change and air quality plan until beyond the next election, environment critics say. Conservative 'strategy of delay' on climate change, critics say



Consultations with these guys, Canada's largest companies inactive on climate change...thats just more hot air....they need regulation not consultation.

Addressing a meeting in Mexico, British government scientist and former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said it makes economic as well as environmental sense to pursue green energy sources. Britain: acting on greenhouse emissions cheaper than doing nothing


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Ambrose

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Nyah, Nyah

With fingers in their ears the North Koreans defied the world. North Korea says it successfully performed its first-ever nuclear test

While Iran only wishes it could.Iran: Sanctions Threat a 'Rusty' Weapon

And all this gamesmanship would be unnecessary if the Americans would only agree to face to face negotiations with both countries.Iran to negotiate deals with US companies if sanctions dropped

Wait a minute this was North Korea's first ever nuclear test...you mean they had untested nuclear weapons? We were worried about untested untried nuclear weapons.


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Iran

North Korea



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First Oda Then Ambrose

Sung to First We Take Manhattan Then We Take Berlin by Leonard Cohen

Round 1. Progressives unite to lobby for Bev Oda's resignation. Politics and Poetry has a backgrounder and an action link to the contact page for you to email your MP. And the Opposition of course.

Round 2. Progresives unite with environmentalists, automakers, and unions to demand Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has to go. Use the same link page and email your MP demanding the Invisible Minister resign when she fails to come up with a Green Plan.




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