streetfestival

Now we’re seeing that MPs in Parliament and ministers, including Trudeau and Mélanie Joly are using a very carefully scripted response saying, “We have not authorized new permits for full weapon systems.”

I get the sense now that they’re kind of a bit spooked that they’ve now decided, “Okay, we actually have to be very careful about what we say. We can’t have people thinking we’re selling military goods to Israel. We can say this thing that is technically true. We’re not sending full weapon systems while obscuring the fact that we are still authorizing huge quantities of military exports that allow the Israeli occupation forces to do their job, which in this case is genocide.”

I have a paid Proton account. I feel like part of what I'm paying for is to not see the word gugal, so I'd be unhappy if I did

Defunding biodiversity science at a time like this...

For the foreseeable future, cutting emissions is the most feasible means of addressing climate change. And whatever carbon removal we might eventually develop should only be used to address the final, hard-to-abate emissions left after fossil fuels are phased out. Most of all, carbon removal should never be used as a substitute for cutting emissions, or to help delay phasing out fossil fuels.

So why is the [US] federal government doing exactly the opposite — putting big money behind dubious carbon capture projects, in ways that specifically benefit Big Oil and help delay climate action?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

Things didn't start out of nowhere on October 7th 2023 - if that's what you're implying

Israel is wilfully orchestrating the distress and chaos you're referencing

[David Eby, BC’s new NDP premier] was as outraged as most Canadians were when the news came down that Bell Media was axing 4,800 employees, fully nine percent of its workforce, selling 45 of its 103 radio stations and cutting its weekend and noon-hour CTV newscasts. “On behalf of all British Columbians that have watched their local news station slowly turn to garbage by these companies … I just want to say: shame on you,” a visibly upset Eby said off the cuff at a press conference on an unrelated matter. He referred to media owners as “corporate vampires” that have “overseen the encrapification of local news” and added that “the impact on communities in British Columbia of their unrestrained corporate greed … is profound.”

Federal Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge also criticized Bell for breaking its promise to invest in news and noted that the Online Streaming Act, which came into effect last year, abolished fees that will save the company $40 million a year while it will also benefit from the $30 million allocated to broadcasting from the $100 million Google has promised in annual funding under the new Online News Act. “They are not going bankrupt,” she said. “They’re still making billions of dollars. They’re still a very profitable company and they still have the capacity and the means to hold their end of the bargain, which is to deliver news reports.

Bell is one of Canada’s most profitable companies, as its 2023 operating earnings rose to $10.4 billion from $10.2 billion in 2022, while its profit margin held steady at 42.2 percent.

Bell’s telecom division makes a profit margin of more than 44 percent because Canadians pay among the highest prices in the world for cell phone service, cable TV and Internet access.

If its latest cutbacks sound familiar, it’s because Bell made similar deep cuts just last June, laying off 1,300 from its Bell Media division, shuttering CTV’s bureaus in London and Los Angeles and closing six radio stations, including two in Vancouver. It also laid off hundreds of workers abruptly in 2021 and closed several radio stations.

Canada has been called “three telcos in a trenchcoat” for the enormous power the country’s media giants wield, but that number fell last year when the toothless Competition Bureau proved unable to prevent Rogers, the country’s second-largest media company, from taking over Shaw, which dominated cable TV in Western Canada.

That is sooo cool!!! I love the pooch in the pic: "I'm too big for the cat path" :P

From https://canadians.org/media/premier-ford-gives-american-bottled-water-giant-permit-draw-billions-litres-ontario/:

Over five years, the permits will allow the American-owned company to take over 8 billion litres of groundwater in total from their main well in Puslinch (Aberfoyle) and a second well in Erin (Hillsburgh). Most of the company’s revenue comes from selling water in single-use, 500-ml plastic bottles.

“These renewed permits grant Triton enough groundwater to fill 14 billion more plastic bottles. Laid end to end, those bottles would stretch 5.6 million kilometers – enough to circle the globe 70 times,” Mark Calzavara added.

“Bottled water is frivolous and wasteful, and groundwater resources are finite. With droughts and forest fires ravaging the planet due to climate change, we cannot allow these precious groundwater reserves to be bottled and sold for profit.”

Yup. https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-get-32-billion-government-grant-new-25-billion-israel-chip-plant-2023-12-26/

“Today’s Alberta government is completely incapable of managing something like climate change, drought and widespread water shortage because they only see environmental problems as political and ideological problems, as opposed to actual problems with potentially catastrophic real-world consequences.”

Meanwhile Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government has appointed an advisory body with no known water experts. But it does include Ian Anderson, a promoter of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that will transport bitumen from the oilsands to the Port of Vancouver, criss-crossing many dwindling rivers, creeks and streams as it does.