Last week, Superstorm Sandy devastated the east coast with high winds, record storm surges and rain. The storm left millions without power, thousands homeless and over a hundred dead, if there was anything positive to come out of this calamity it was that climate change was finally front page news again. Unfortunately the only time climate change is mentioned by the powers that be or the media is in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina and after the Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and the Coast of Japan, but talk of climate change didn’t last a month after these events. With the general election in the US this Tuesday, I suspect talk of climate change this time will barely last a week.
Year: 2012
Election 2012: The Final Countdown
If the polls are to be believed (and they shouldn’t), the political landscape the day after the election will probably look similar to the day before and things will likely carry on much as it has for the past four years. However, there are some variables that these polls don’t take into account and I don’t just mean the weather.
NDG cyclists and pedestrians and transit users rail against MUHC super-hospital traffic plans
Emily Campbell speaks with Projet Montreal City Councillor Peter McQueen (Notre-Dame-de-Grace) and community activist Marlo Turner Ritchie who aren’t impressed with traffic plans surrounding the new McGill University Health Centre Super-Hospital. They and other local pedestrians, public transit users and cyclists don’t want to be cut off from an entire neighbourhood…
Total Recall
Thanks in part to government imposed austerity and corporate influence over our public health officials; we no longer know what we are eating, more importantly we don’t really know if it’s healthy. Government cuts in food inspections, deregulation of industry and corporate greed are keeping us in the dark when we go to the grocery store or the butcher shop
728 minutes of fame
Some cops think they’re above the laws they are charged with enforcing, that’s nothing new. But now it looks like the Montreal Police force (SPVM) thinks it’s above the unwritten laws of celebrity and fame. Warhol said that everyone gets 15 minutes in the spotlight. Stéfanie Trudeau, better known as Constable 728, used those up well before the Maple Spring went on its summer break. So why did she turn up again in the news mid-October…
Still not convinced of the value of social media
Working in a field called public relations that calls for being on top of the action and being well connected to people and what they do, I still find it difficult to fully embrace social media.
Let the People Decide
Political debates are a series of opinions disputed between politicians. These opinions can range in topic from social issues, to economics, to foreign policy. Debates are routinely used by candidates to try and sway the undecided voters to cast their ballet for them. Undecided voters typically avoid paying attention to politics and are therefore uninformed and susceptible to the media’s influence. In close elections this makes the debates all that more important.
Corruption inquiry shines light on our own lethargy
Of the many appalling similarities between the Cliche Commission and the current Charbonneau Commission, it is the similar lack of judicial ‘teeth’. Do we actually expect someone important, someone at the top, to see the insides of a prison? Of course not.
It’s not an earthquake until Facebook and Twitter say so
Tuesday night I was cat sitting for my mother when all of a sudden it seemed like someone had turned on a jackhammer in the apartment downstairs. When it stopped, I rushed to both balconies to see if anything was happening on the street below. Nothing.
‘Half the Sky’ a vital film on women’s oppression
Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Vietnam: there are girls who are raped by a relative, or kidnapped by a man or a woman claiming to be a helping relative or friend and then cruelly sold and enslaved to give their body night after night, day after day, to clients, as they call them.