Depressing - Week 173 - Aug 18-25

We need to start the week by talking about Lac Megantic.  I'd forgotten how many people had actually died in this accident.  Nearly 50, if you forgot.  Anyhow, I think this accident points at a whole lot of bad things in society.  Overworked people blamed for the shortcomings of the system (the railroad had to get special permission to run with only one engineer...and he's pretty much been the scapegoat for the company...not to diminish his part in all of this).  A government increasingly hands off of safety regulations and requirements.  A company pursuing profits above everything else.  And a government blinded by the need to harvest and ship oil around the country.  Terrible.

So lets lighten the mood!

Following the money trail, it looks like the murderous Mugabe regime was directly supported by American hedge funds looking for sweetheart mining deals.  Wait, that's even more terrible than the first few links.  Please do click through and read the Businessweek article.

The Harper government prevented publicly funded scientists from talking about their research into oil sands pollution.  A non government scientist did present the findings, and the response from the government was to call him "biased" and figure out ways to discredit him.  Well...that sucks, but we're getting better!

Shit.  They've also blocked government scientists from talking about low arctic ice levels.  How is that going to help anything?

Christy Clark decided to cut funding to several RCMP programs, including a gang task force and missing persons investigations.  Oh...man...that's not helping

The government has concluded that they did nothing wrong by targeting specific charities with CRA audits.  Wait...they get do decide whether or not they should investigate themselves?  I'm not feeling any better.

I'm sorry, but tickets for pot possession is just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  What are you saying?  This is legal to do, but we're going to fine you if we catch you doing it?  And oh, we're really keen on making sure all of this is supplied via the black market.  What a stupid fucking idea.  Peter McKay is an idiot.  He doesn't cheer me up at all.

MacLean's does some digging into plans for anti-Marijuana advertisements.  They find that there have been absolutely no plans to air ads until very recently.  Which makes it hard for the Conservatives to argue that this is anything but a recently concocted political strategy to use public money to fight Justin Trudeau.  And Rona is hard at work defending it.  This is sort of funny.  Not in a "ha ha" way though.  So I'm still depressed.

Canada Border Services has suspended three officers.  Three officers who responded to a direct request from the RCMP to help with an arrest.  Which they did.  But shouldn't have?  Oh man...make me feel better, world!

Maybe some of these next few will?

The Walrus highlights Canada's somewhat shameful record of voting equality.  Nope.

A look at the lack of criminal justice resources for both prosecuting and researching the effects of all the new Conservative tough-on-crime laws.  Nope.

Toronto Police teamed up with the CBSA to deport illegal immigrants through some sham "safety inspections".  Oh...I might have already used that one last week.  So that's good news, right?