In the information age we are inundated by news and trivia, Don’t Blink is a regular featured designed to hilight a whole bunch of stories you may have missed in a relatively small amount of space.
Canada:
Most Canadians do not support Stephen Harper’s anti-Palestinian stand, most Canadians do not support Stephen Harper in general but he takes care of those who do. Millions of Canadian rivers and lakes lost environmental protection this week, but of the few that retained protection, most were in Tory ridings.
It is not surprising how little Harper cares about environmental protection given the amount of oil money flowing into his party’s coffers.
Newfoundland is on the hook for 100 million in environmental cleanup after the company that caused the damage filed for bankruptcy.
The Grassy Narrows community celebrated the 10th anniversary of their logging blockade this week.
The RCMP has racked up $800 million in overtime over the last 5 years.
and as long as the Tories are talking about merging provinces, the National Post’s Steve Murray has some suggestions.
U.S.
After being pummeled in the last election, the Republican party did some soul searching and decided that they didn’t really need to change a thing. Meanwhile staunchly conservative Nebraska has decided that the best way forward is to make their kids dumber. In staunchly conservative Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer decided that the best way to respond to questions about global warming was to punch the reporter who asked them in the head.
Meanwhile the US prohibition on marijuana has been linked to 11,000+ hospitalizations in 2010 alone, the US Supreme court has decided to check the constitutionality of gay marriage, the NYPD credits Occupy Wall Street with a drop in crime, Fox News doesn’t love Karl Rove anymore and police in Cleveland Ohio managed to subdue 2 unarmed suspects with only 137 bullets.
the Other 95% of the World
UN Talks on climate change went, basically, nowhere at all, meanwhile it turns out that past predictions on climate change were far too conservative.
Numerous public interest groups flew to Aukland, New Zealand this week to weigh in on the TPP – global copyright treaty – only to find out that they would only have 15 minutes, in total, for all of the groups to weigh in.
In Afghanistan more women are reporting sexual abuse and India, despite having 10% of the world’s Muslim population and despite being right next to Afghanistan, has virtually no al-Queda presence.
The UK is considering a system of drug decriminalization and peace in Northern Ireland is under threat again.
In Congo there are more than 25 different rebel groups operating and you can’t tell the players without a program.
Google is funding arial surveillance to protect against poachers in Africa and Asia.
Science and Technology:
This week science has found what is believed to be the world’s oldest dinosaur, discovered a 200 million year old cocoon, discovered gullies on an asteroid, tested a brain pacemaker to treat Alzheimer’s disease, used a 3D printer to create new cancer drugs, crossed the Pacific ocean bottom with a robot, announced that other solar systems may be more habitable than our own, reported on record changes in the arctic, studied the effect of the ebola virus on primate populations and why the world’s largest trees are dying and explained why human smoking is good for birds.
(Not to be outdone, religion blew some stuff up and argued about what to call your holiday tree.)
Fun Stuff
Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Broken Social Scene and many others are recording pirate music. While you wait for them to finish, check out the Stranglers live in London and listen to the Velvet Underground, live at the Boston Tea Party (1969)
Finally, aliens are buzzing Hawaii with their stereos way too loud and the Mayan apocalypse will, apparently, spare France.