News and Opinion from Montreal, Canada and the World
For us dozy and docile westerners, for whom a protest means anything from a couple hundred to a couple thousand people chanting for an hour or two before going home, this past week has been startling in the extreme.
First, a wave of popular anger unseated a seemingly stable government in Tunisia in a matter of days. Then, while the shock waves from that event were still sinking in, today’s news out of Egypt came like a lightning bolt.
If you close your eyes and think hard enough, you can almost see the smirks on the faces of the telecom giants. If you let your imagination run wild, you can even hear the pitch that sold them on their latest course of action.
“No, sir, it’s better than cable TV,” beamed some middle management type, proud of his discovery, “with cable TV, we pay for content and then charge our customers based on how much they watch. If we start charging for the net the same way we charge for cable, we get the same cash from the consumer without having to fork out anything to those…
So it seems Canada might be going to the polls come April or May for the fourth time in seven years. None of the political parties are saying they want an election, at least not publicly, but you can already smell the hate in the air.
Stephen Harper fired “warning shots” at opposition parties last week by running television ads attacking each party leader on a personal level. This prompted retaliatory ads by…
President Obama give a heartfelt speech to mourners in Arizona – Watch below President Obama just gave a speech to mourners in Arizona, consoling them and helping to give them the strength to move through the tragedy. Definitely worth a look. Very encouraging and inspiring words!
By now everyone has heard of the assassination attempt of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and subsequent rampage of Jared Loughner that left six people dead and fourteen others wounded. The question everyone seems to be asking in the few days since is why? Was it the rhetoric of a few right-wing politicians like Sarah Palin, the fear mongering words of pundits like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, the Second Amendment and the lack of gun control or does the responsibility fall squarely on an unstable extremist man with a gun?
Back in 2004 before the newly merged Conservative Party won their first minority government, Stephen Harper made his views on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation quite clear. “I think when you look at things like main English-language television and probably to a lesser degree Radio Two; you could look there at putting those on a commercial basis.” He said. Before he was even Prime Minister, Harper was advocating the defunding, sale or commercialization of the government owned CBC. Since taking office, the conservatives have done what they can to diminish the importance of the CBC. First by defunding the station by about $75 million a year, next by appointing Hubert Lacroix as the president of the CBC. Lacroix is a mergers and acquisitions lawyer (and Conservative party donator) with no management experience in radio or television production.
While I was doing my undergrad at McGill, I was part of a group that visited high schools to give guest lectures about different environmental subjects. I had some of the best, and worst experiences with the young ‘uns, but I am, of course, going to talk about THE worst one. My partner and I were standing in front of a West Island high school class that just wasn’t into us. They were the noisy bunch – the more difficult children in the school, grade eight if I remember correctly. We were grasping desperately at anything to get them interested in our presentation on climate change. Polar bears; the poster child of climate change were an obvious pick. Who doesn’t like polar bears?
What a year! We’re still here, so hopefully that means that we’re doing something right…or not at all if we look at the last year in eco news. Without getting all ‘told you so’ on your butt, let’s have a look to see what the Green Bean has brought you throughout 2010 … Earth Day turned 40 this year! Two days before that anniversary, the biggest accidental, and certainly most frustrating ecological disaster we’ve ever seen dominated the media for months. Yup, it’s the BP oil spill, one of the worst environmental disasters of all time, but Obama did good by banning offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico until 2017.
I must admit, I’m a bit confused. I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to write about here. It’s a year-in-review piece, so at least the time frame is solid, but the subject matter, hmm, that’s another story. You see, I don’t really have a clear beat. I started off 2010 as a theatre writer, but now that’s done by others and occasionally me, at least when it comes to burlesque shows (heh heh, but seriously, check out my reviews of Blood Ballet and Glam Gam). I do write about news and politics, even in this space, but I’m not the only one, so this can’t be a year in the news piece. I could write about the year it was for FTB. (and in fact I will, but that’s coming up New Year’s Eve, not here.) So I guess I’m just going to have to talk about the year in random things that caught my attention.
The Federal Communications Commission in the United States has approved new rules intended to prohibit broadband corporations from interfering with Internet traffic streaming to their clientele.
The 3-2 vote Tuesday on “net neutrality” has angered republicans who wish to tie up the new rules in court in hopes of getting the new law overturned. Meanwhile, the democrats are also bitter as they fear the new rules don’t go far enough.
The rules prohibit phone and cable companies from