Let Him Get On With His Life

Whenever I see Omar Khadr, I never fail to be impressed by his thoughtful reflectiveness. Despite the fact that there is a rabid element in Canada that will never see him as anything more than a terrorist, those with the ability to assess him critically and understand how his rights as a Canadian citizen were grossly violated during his time in Guantanamo will agree that it is time to let him get on with his life.

This CBC interview with Khadr deserves to be widely seen. The first two are clips from Rosemary Barton's interview with him. The third is the full interview. Even if you don't have much time, at least watch one of them:

A Timely Reminder

George Carlin died in 2008, but the following could have been performed last night. Although some of the language is coarse, it somehow seems entirely appropriate:

Bravo, Jerry Brown

While Donald Trump is content to call climate change a hoax, his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Accord does not mean that others are just throwing up their hands in exasperation or surrender. The West Coast seems particularly resistant to backward thinking and, no doubt, California Governor Jerry Brown is joining a long list of White House enemies in making this announcement:

On Thursday evening, Governor Brown will mount a new challenge to the administration on climate change. In a videoconference address to a global citizen festival in Hamburg, Germany, where President Trump and other officials will negotiate wording of a statement on the Paris climate change accord, Governor Brown will issue a sweeping invitation to a global “climate action” summit meeting in San Francisco.

“Look, it’s up to you and it’s up to me and tens of millions of other people to get it together to roll back the forces of carbonization and join together to combat the existential threat of climate change,” Brown will tell the thousands of people expected to attend the festival. In the message, a preview of which was provided by aides, he will invite “entrepreneurs, singers, musicians, mathematicians, professors” and others who represent “the whole world” to the September 2018 conference in San Francisco.

“Yes, I know President Trump is trying to get out of the Paris agreement, but he doesn’t speak for the rest of America,” Brown will say in the video. “We in California and in states all across America believe it’s time to act.”

Here is what Brown had to say a few months ago about Trump's retrograde vision:

Look At This, Please

Click here for a story I think we all should read.

Meet Leah Denbok, a 17-year-old photographer from Collingwood, Ont. In the past three years, she's walked the streets in her province in Toronto, Barrie and Kitchener, as well as in New York City, capturing the lives of the homeless with her photos.

Along with her father Tim, the pair offer $10 to each person for permission to tell their stories.

"With my book, I'm trying to portray two goals," said the teen photographer. "First of which is to shine a spotlight on the plight of homelessness, and second, I'd like to humanize homeless people because so often they're seen as subhuman individuals."

If you follow the above link, I think you will agree that Leah has succeeded on both counts.

Trump Can Dish It Out

But can he take it?

Truly, Profoundly Disturbing

I have just finished reading a long article in National Geographic, one that, without any use of hyperbole, should disturb all of us deeply and profoundly. But thanks to our capacity to ignore anything that disturbs our worldview, the article's dire warning will likely provoke little concern and no alteration of our bloated, cossetted and unsustainable lifestyles.

The following video summarizes the situation well, but following it I am including some excerpts from the article, although I do recommend taking some time to read the entire piece carefully.



The problem, of course, is earth's warming temperatures, but those rising numbers are much greater in Antarctica, where the ice shelves that hold in the glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates:

Why should we care about Antarctica ice melt? Antarctica's ice shelves are disintegrating and the glaciers behind them are flowing faster into the ocean. This could spell disaster for coastal areas around the world, and scientists are in a race against time to understand how it's happening. Sea levels around the world could rise by 14 feet if all of the ice melted just on West Antarctica.

Large swaths of West Antarctica are hemorrhaging ice these days. The warming has been the most dramatic on the Antarctic Peninsula, a spine of ice-cloaked mountains that reaches 700 miles up toward the tip of South America. Catching the powerful winds and ocean currents that swirl endlessly around Antarctica, the peninsula gets slammed with warm air and water from farther north. Average annual temperatures on its west side have risen nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950—several times faster than the rest of the planet—and the winters have warmed an astonishing 9 degrees. Sea ice now forms only four months a year instead of seven.

The ice shelves, Fricker says, “are the canary in the coal mine.” Because they’re already floating, they don’t raise sea level themselves when they melt—but they signal that a rise is imminent, as the glaciers behind them accelerate. Fricker and her team have found that from 1994 to 2012, the amount of ice disappearing from all Antarctic ice shelves, not just the ones in the Amundsen Sea, increased 12-fold, from six cubic miles to 74 cubic miles per year. “I think it’s time for us scientists to stop being so cautious” about communicating the risks, she says.

The video, along with the above three excerpts, are merely the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Yet the signs are clear, ominous, and accelerating. I have little doubt that the predicted flooding cataclysms will occur much faster than mid-to-late century. Indeed, before my time is up, I fully expect the apocalypse to be well underway.

We Are Not Amused

Like schoolchildren exchanging a lewd jest, Charles and Camillia just couldn't contain themselves as they listened to a demonstration of throat singing in Iqaluit. The first 15 seconds of the video fully capture their disgraceful deportment. Significantly, it has not been widely reported.

Wonder how the monarchists will spin this:



One can only ardently hope for the continued health and longevity of the Queen.