Planet S Mag - Drill This In by David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Planet S Mag - Drill This In by David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

RANT , Rant, Rant,

Here are two things that caught my eye Conrad "Just do your time a shut up ", If you cannot to the time then donot do the crime. And how come the new is not covering this story in Saskatchewan.



CBC News, cbc.ca, Updated: July 7, 2010 9:29 AM
Conrad Black applies for bail

Conrad Black has applied for bail with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

In a filing late Tuesday, lawyers for the Montreal-born media baron argued that he should be released immediately in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in late June that set aside his fraud convictions.

Black's conviction for obstruction of justice remains in place. The appeal court will now decide whether to have a hearing on his bail request while it decides whether to overturn his fraud convictions in light of the Supreme Court's decision. It is not yet known when that might happen.

The 7th Circuit Court is the same one that first denied Black's request for bail after he was convicted, along with three other Hollinger executives in 2007, of defrauding $6.1 million US from the company.

He was originally accused of pilfering more than $60 million US.

Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was the prosecutor on the original case. His office has thus far declined comment.

Minister to face ethics probe over Jaffer link

Last Updated: Tuesday, July 6, 2010 |CBC News

Minister of Natural Resources Christian Paradis responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on June 7.
(Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

The federal ethics commissioner is looking into Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis's alleged dealings with former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer.

In a letter to Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson confirmed she is commencing an examination of Jennings's allegations that Paradis may have breached portions of the Conflict of Interest Act.

The government operations committee has been investigating allegations that Jaffer, a former Conservative caucus chair and husband of MP Helena Guergis, lobbied his former government colleagues for access to a green infrastructure fund.

Documents show some staff and parliamentary secretaries of cabinet ministers, including Paradis and Transport Minister John Baird, treated Jaffer's inquiries about the fund on a priority basis.

The documents include an email from a Paradis staff member explaining to Jaffer's company, Green Power Generations, that her department was being "hard-headed" over Jaffer's solar-panel project proposal.

Jaffer, who is not registered as a lobbyist, has denied conducting unregistered lobbying or receiving a penny of federal funds.

"I have always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with my obligations," Paradis said in a statement

No Talent !

I saw this was thinking that our preimer was playing 52 card pick up with out any cards. The lack of talent Brad Wall has is very scarey. If was not for Rob Norris and Ken Krawetrz to former liberals.Talent pool is very small. Read this and tell me what you think?

Sask. gets new finance minister
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 |

There are two newcomers to the cabinet table after Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall shuffled his cabinet. (CBC)

Deputy Premier Ken Krawetz is Saskatchewan's new finance minister following a major cabinet shuffle on Tuesday.

Among the biggest changes announced by Premier Brad Wall: Environment Minister Nancy Heppner and Finance Minister Rod Gantefoer are now out of cabinet.

Wall also sent Regina MLA Christine Tell to the back benches on Tuesday.

Newcomers to cabinet include Regina's Laura Ross and Lloydminster's Tim McMillan.

And former cabinet minister Darryl Hickie is back after a spell away from the cabinet table.

Krawetz, formerly the education minister as well as Wall's deputy, replaces Gantefoer in the finance portfolio. Gantefoer announced earlier this month he wasn't going to run in the 2011 provincial election. As a result, some pundits and legislature watchers were expecting him to be out of cabinet Tuesday.

Perhaps more of a surprise was Wall dropping high-profile Martensville MLA Heppner. As environment minister, Heppner was under fire from the NDP Opposition for both her government's climate change policies and a controversial bill that could allow environmentally sensitive Crown land to be sold.

McMillan, who made a name for himself in the past year as a champion of endangered wild ponies, will be the minister responsible for the Crown Investments Corporation, while Ross is government services minister.

Hickie, who left cabinet a year ago following a sometimes rocky stint as corrections, public safety and policing minister when there were several high-profile escapes and accidental releases from jails, becomes municipal affairs minister.

Donna Harpauer becomes education minister, handing her social services portfolio to longtime colleague June Draude.

The First Nations and Métis relations portfolio goes to Ken Cheveldayoff. Bill Hutchinson moves from there to tourism, while Tourism Minister Dustin Duncan is promoted to environment.

Wall says with these changes, 24 of his 37 government colleagues will have served in cabinet. He said earlier this month it's expected this will be the final cabinet shuffle before the election on Nov. 7, 2011.

Something to think about

June 29
Talking about Chernobyl still 'urgent' threat on anniversary: Ukraine
Something that caught my eye as I think about the home land of my father and mother. Ukraine problems make me think how lucky we are in Canada. Also we can learn from these problems as Saskatchewan looks at different ways to get engery as we grow in Saskatchewan.


Chernobyl still 'urgent' threat on anniversary: Ukraine

The plant's fourth nuclear reactor still presents an active danger after work to replace an aging sarcophagus around the facility was delayed due to a shortage of funds last year, Yanukovych said according to a statement.


The problem "is urgent not only for Ukraine but also for our neighbours," he said.


"We must of course unite our partners, donors and all our neighbours around the question because it is highly dangerous."


The atomic fallout from the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, when one of the reactors exploded, spread to neighbouring European states, leaving some two million people still suffering from contamination, Yanukovych said.


"There are still more than two million people suffering from harmful effects of radiation exposure, of whom 498,000 are children," he said.


The death toll from the Chernobyl disaster is bitterly disputed, with a United Nations toll from 2005 setting it at just 4,000, but non-governmental groups suggesting the true toll could reach tens or even hundreds of thousands.


According to Ukrainian official figures, more than 25,000 people known as "liquidators" from then-Soviet Ukraine, Russia and Belarus have died since taking part in the bid to limit radioactive fallout after the catastrophe.


Many children and adolescents touched by the nuclear fallout have suffered from thyroid cancer — the most common illness from the radiation.


While the Chernobyl power plant was finally closed in 2000, the dead reactor is still a threat because the concrete cover hastily laid over some 200 tonnes of spilled radioactive material is cracking.

© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.

Think big saskatchewan

I saw this , I thought I would comment. it time we in Saskatchewan start thinking that we are a have provinice and deal with issues as the big guys would. Stop the negative and start thinking postive. We are are going up here is some facts for you.

Canada's population has gone past the 34-million mark.
Stats Canada estimates the population was 34,019,000 on April 1.
That's an increase of just over 88 thousand, from Jan. 1.
As of April 1st, Saskatchewan's population was estimated at 1,041,700. That's a 0.36% gain and the second highest growth rate among the provinces. This was our largest first quarter population increase since 1972. The growth is attributed mostly to interprovincial in-migration and international migration.

couple things that caught my eye

Both of thiese articles from small local newspapers, which our major newspaper didnot mention. Why is that?

One-Way Trip
Stephen LaRose
Published Thursday June 17, 09:38 am

Saskatchewan migratory birds face a deadly winter in Gulf Of Mexico


Spewing from 40,000 to 100,000 barrels of unrefined crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, the wellhead has resisted several efforts by the wellsite owner, British Petroleum, to cap its flow. As of June 14 (press time), 39 million gallons of oil have spewed unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico.

Some in the oil drilling industry now say that the wellhead could still be discharging into the open sea by Christmas.


The blowout has been partly contained by a steel cap and riser pipe that’s diverting some of the oil to an oil tanker ship on the surface. From June 10 to 14, the amount of oil captured this way has gone from about 6,000 barrels a day up to almost 15,000 barrels a day.


The oil slick stretches nearly 3,500 kilometers, and has or will wash ashore in four states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Many shoreline areas contain nesting areas for migratory birds which spend their summers in Saskatchewan.


What kind of winter home will they find when they return?


Disgust and sadness permeates the conversation, even through the telephone lines. It’s understandable. Trevor Herriot has made a career and a life’s work examining the delicate balance between nature and man in the Saskatchewan grasslands, and now someone wants to talk to him about one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in history.


Oil and wildlife mixes about as well as oil and water. Birds are birds, not experts in determining oil-contaminated areas. From hundreds of feet in the air, birds can’t tell the difference between the normal ocean and the area contaminated by the spill. So, when they dive into the water for their food, they come up coated in oil.


They can’t fly. Their feathers lose the ability to regulate their body heat. And if they try to peck or lick the oil from their bodies, they ingest the stuff, get sick and die.


The oil will also kill plants and animals that are part of their food chain.


This isn’t a local problem for American states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. The oil spill’s effect will reach throughout North America.


…includingSaskatchewan. The Gulf Coast is the winter home for many migratory birds that spend their summers in Saskatchewan — some of whom are on the endangered species list.



The biggest name to stand out — though it’s far from the biggest bird on the list — is the piping plover, a shorebird. Climate change and human development may already be doing a number on the plover, says Bird Studies Canada, because its natural habitat in western Canada — riverbanks and lakeshore marshes — are either drying up or being made unsuitable for the birds by conversion into public beaches or watering holes for cattle. Damming and draining doesn’t help, either.



Other birds who spend their summers in Saskatchewan and their winters in the Gulf of Mexico coast include the common loon, the Western Grebe, Horned Grebe, the American White Pelican, the Double-crested Cormorant, some gulls and terns and the Long-billed Curlew.



There’s also the Short-billed Dowitcher, the greater and lesser Yellowlegs, the Red-breasted Merganser and the Blue-winged Teal.



This fall, these birds will find their habitats destroyed when they return on the annual pilgrimage Mother Nature has programmed into them.



Tens of thousands will die, entire species will face extinction, and in Herriot’s words, “a biological ecosystem that took hundreds of millions of years to create will be destroyed in a month.”



Even worse, hurricane season starts in late August. Storm surges and tidal waves created by hurricanes and tropical storms that pass through the Gulf of Mexico could push the oil further inland, destroying the habitats of species that live inland.



One of the few pieces of good news in the oil spill disaster, Herriot notes, is that the leaking oil will probably not affect the nesting areas of the whooping crane. Placed on the endangered species list in 1967, the whooping cranes’ winter nesting areas are along the Gulf of Mexico coast in Texas — west of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. The Gulf of Mexico’s current will send the oil east, away from their nesting areas.



The whooping crane’s survival is remarkable not for how many are left — estimates put the number of such birds alive at about 250 — but from how far back the bird has come. At one time there were fewer than 60.



So, good for whooping cranes. Nice that one bird population won’t be devastated. Harriet is still concerned for Saskatchewan’s migratory birds.



I don’t need to tell Planet S readers that birds such as the piping plover can’t vote. They have to rely on environmentalists, naturalists, and people like Herriot to speak for them.



Good thing that someone does. Too bad they’re not listened to.



When the Saskatchewan government overhauled the Wildlife Habitat Protection Act two months ago, environmental concerns took a back seat to “getting government out of the marketplace.” In right-wing political parlance, this is called “business as usual.”



For Herriot — author of three books (River in a Dry Land,Jacob’s Wound: A Search for the Spirit of Wildness and Grass Song Sky) about the relationship between man and nature — it’s just another step in exactly the wrong direction.



“In Saskatchewan, as well as federally, there’s an increasing demand by government to streamline the environmental review process,” he says. “We should be going in the other direction. We should be taking steps to preserve what wildlife and wild lands that we have left.



“What they call ‘paperwork,’ we call stewardship,” he says.



Apparently, there wasn’t much ’stewardship’ on board Deepwater Horizonbefore the April 20thexplosion. In a May 20 report to the White House, University of California, Berkeley environmental engineering professor Robert Bea said “this disaster was preventable, had existing progressive guidelines and practices been followed.



“Other existing U.S. guidelines that were simply waived by the responsible regulatory authority could have prevented this incident,” said Bea, who heads the Centre for Catastrophic Risk Management at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering.



“You know, I think that many people still believe, despite all the evidence about pollution, global warming, and the interconnectedness between man and nature, that the world ecosystem can take all the kinds of abuse modern industry can throw at it,” says Herriot.



“I hope we can learn from this that nature has only a finite capability to handle such abuse — certainly less than our capabilities to abuse nature.”


WGST department becomes program
Women’s and gender studies folded into new interdisciplinary initiative


VICTORIA MARTINEZ
Associate News Editor

After 18 years as a department, women’s and gender studies is transforming into a program this year.

Students will still be able to take honours, four and three year degrees in WGST, but the courses offered have changed. The focus of the program will be separated into gender, sexuality and cultural studies and transnational feminisms.

To reduce overlap with courses offered by other programs, eight courses were replaced with more current topics. Popular courses will still be offered as humanities and social science electives to arts and science students.

“The new women’s and gender studies program will continue to explore topics that span a full spectrum of issues from the intimate to the international,” department head Joan Borsa explains. The traditional focus on examining human behaviour and culture will not be affected by the change to program status.

Otherwise, undergraduate programming will not see too many changes.

“A gender-based lens is relevant to all disciplines,” said Borsa.

The WGST department has existed since 1992, and has offered a major since 1996.

The program will be the first program offered by the newly formed Interdisciplinary Centre for Culture and Creativity, which will be devoted to cross disciplinary study.

The transition will expand the pool of resources WGST can draw from in terms of faculty and research collaborations by sharing information across all the disciplines included in the ICCC. The centre will work with outside groups with more leverage than one department might be able to.

A large portion of WGST students already take minors in other fields, so the new designation will simplify that process. The program now contains seven specializations including English, economics and philosophy.

The ICCC move will also enable the program to offer a master’s degree taking advantage of other disciplines, which is scheduled to be offered by 2011. Research should benefit immediately, since the program will work more closely with other programs than the department could.

The main role of the ICCC is to encourage cooperation between fields of study, and will recruit on behalf of all the programs it contains. The defining quality of projects in the centre is social responsibility combined with cultural and creative work.

The next program to be added to the ICCC will be an MFA in writing, with reading French and courses specifically for first year Greystone scholars already included.

If one of your one say this then maybe it is true?

I think that that shine of the Haper government has coming off the armour. But if we can get out crap together and give a true opposition , The Liberal party can form government. What do you think? read this tell me?


Don Martin, National Post · Wednesday, Jun. 16, 2010

Rarely heard Conservative MP stood in the Commons yesterday to admonish MPs on their low productivity this spring.

"Not one new government bill has passed Parliament to become law," scolded Cheryl Gallant. "It is time for the opposition to stop interfering, get serious and start working."

Better late than never, a solution is unfolding on Parliament Hill. MPs are ending 63 days of all-out war over fake lakes and parliamentary supremacy with an outbreak of peace on two fronts while readying a rush of legislation forward for final votes today.

Clearly all Ottawa needs to supercharge MPs into action is to keep them on constant countdown just 72 hours from a long vacation break.

That seems to have goaded the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois into holding their noses yesterday to support a last-minute government deal on Afghan detainee documents.

Just over an hour later, all the parties did a group hug with Auditor-General Sheila Fraser and bowed to the "public interest" (which means the screech of angry voters) in allowing her to peek at a "sampling" of MP spending that they had tried for weeks to keep under a blanket of secrecy.

Neither deal should be confused with a new sense of parliamentary co-operation. This is simply what happens when the MP mind focuses on fleeing for a break that outlasts the average Canadian high school student's summer holiday by almost a month.

The detainee document deal finds a reasonable middle ground between the government's desire for all-out secrecy and the oppositions' demand for all-out disclosure. Only the NDP wouldn't go along.

Declaring Cabinet documents off-limits to MP eyes seems to go against the Speaker's ruling on the MPs' right to see all detainee documents uncensored, but they will be viewed by independent arbiters chosen by all parties, so it signals give and take on both sides. The nagging question will be timing. With documents scattered around the Kandahar Airfield or reportedly lining the bottom of shipping containers at sea, the collection, sorting, editing, legal examination and re-censoring could outlast our combat mission in Kandahar.

The partial disclosure of MP expenses was also achieved under last-minute pressure to do something before MPs head for home to face voters.

The great misperception was always that Sheila Fraser wanted a look at every purchase of coffee and a muffin, when all she actually sought was a performance audit of spending programs and budget envelopes. She did not get her way with Senators, who are still ignoring her request for a probe of their budgets. Shame on them.

But MPs can rejoice, knowing they've struck a deal at minimal risk of having any of their own personal spending irregularities exposed. Ms. Fraser will only peruse a sample of their expense claims and won't name names if she finds hard-to-swallow spending. That's like telling employees that the company bean counters will scan only a "representative sample" of self-approved expense accounts.

Even better news for MPs was learning it will be late 2011 -- just as Ms. Fraser's 10-year appointment expires and safely after the next election--before she reports on the expenses.

In both cases, the last-minute summer scramble has produced reasonable solutions to sharp political divisions. RelievedMPs have put their trash out on the curb. Now they're clear to head off the Hill.

dmartin@nationalpost.com
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