TODAY: Canada
TUESDAY: St. Helena
WEDNESDAY: Liberia
THURSDAY: Gibraltar
FRIDAY: Turkey
SATURDAY: Congo-Brazzaville
Canada, today, is seeing a campaign to make 43,000 square kilometers of Manitoba/Ontario boreal forest east of Lake Winnipeg, the largest intact boreal forest on Earth, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The land is currently home to the Bloodvein River First Nation, as well as Atikaki Provincial Wilderness Park. The effort is being led by a group called Pimachiowin Aki, and is being backed by the province of Manitoba, as well as conservationist David Suzuki.
Suzuki stresses 'intact': "The important thing is the "intactness". If you drive a road through a part of a forest, if you put pipes in, or if you put electrical wires through, you don't have an intact forest left. And then degradation is inevitable."
This comes with opposition. Canada's Conservative Party, led in Manitoba by Hugh McFadyen, wants to put a hydro line through the forest, in the interest of supplying electricity to southern Manitoba, as well as exporting energy to Minnesota and Wisconsin. This fight has been going for several years now; when the New Democratic Party took power in 2007, they moved the proposed line west of Lake Winnipeg- still through boreal forest, but not through the forest in dispute. A provincial election in October, if won by the Conservatives, would see the line put back through the east side, effectively killing the World Heritage bid despite Conservative claims that it would not.
There is precedent for worry about UNESCO's opinion. One of the only two World Heritage sites ever to be delisted, Germany's Dresden Elbe Valley, was delisted in 2009 due to the construction of the Waldschlosschen Bridge, which cut through the valley.
Suzuki, for one, is incredulous, saying, "If the planet in which we live, the very things that keep us alive, become a political issue, we're screwed. We're absolutely screwed. We're talking about the life-support systems of the planet. How can that possibly be a political issue?"
Becoming a World Heritage site wouldn't completely block the area from development, but it would serve as a powerful deterrent. In addition to the prestige, World Heritage status allows the site to apply for a portion of a $4 million (US) annual fund allocated to sites in danger, as well as providing a boost to tourism.
Were the boreal forest to gain World Heritage Site status, it would be the first between Alberta and Ottawa. 15 Canadian sites currently enjoy World Heritage status:
Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, Alberta/British Columbia
Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta
Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alberta (yes, that is its name. They have a book on sale there, called 'Imagining Head-Smashed-In'.)
Historic District of Quebec, Quebec
Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Nova Scotia
Kluane/Wrangell-St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek, Yukon/British Columbia/Alaska (shared with United States)
L'Ase aux Meadows National Historic Site, Newfoundland
Miguasha National Park, Quebec
Nahanni National Park, Northwest Territories
Old Town Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (you may actually know Lunenburg from those Cisco ads done by Ellen Page)
Rideau Canal, Ontario
SGang Gwaay, British Columbia
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, Alberta/Montana (shares with United States)
Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta/Northwest Territories
The annual World Heritage Committee meeting is from June 19-29 in Paris. A majority of committee members must vote in favor for a site to be enshrined. They are currently Australia, Bahrain, Barbados, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, Iraq, Jordan, Mali, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates.
42 sites are currently to be considered; the list can, as per Rule 13.4 of the Rules of Procedure, be revised until 48 hours prior to the meeting. No Canadian site is currently among them.
Showing posts with label canada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canada. Show all posts
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Wiki Walk
You know what we haven't done in a long time? Pore through some Wikileaks diplomatic cables. Since everyone's kind of gotten bored with going through them every day and going 'hey, look at this' to every single thing, we're going to have to go to Wikileaks itself for the cables, which means the links that follow are not safe for military types.
The news organizations that don't have the entire stack of cables notwithstanding, so far 11,218 of the 251,287 cables have been released. That's 4.46% of the total.
That said, let's go browsing. Again, we're linking directly to the cables, so click with care.
First, let's just note the oldest cable in the group (for now), coming out of 1966. It comes out of Argentina, dealing with national jurisdictions in coastal waters. Argentine legislation under consideration at the time would claim territory six miles offshore, and 200 miles as "preferential". The Argentine navy claimed that it would soon be standard throughout the Western Hemisphere. (The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea set a maximum of 12 miles where a country can exert total control, a further 12 miles for more limited control, and an exclusive economic zone of 200 miles, which gives a country the rights to resources but doesn't let them restrict access. So Argentina wasn't too far off.)
The second-oldest is from February 1972, dealing with the sale of F-4E fighter jets to Iran. Ah, Cold War. How morally ambiguous you made us.
A psychological profile of Iranians in general made in 1979, written by one Victor Tomseth, isn't overly flattering. As you'd think back then. It was leaked way back in November, but it's the first you've likely heard of it. The first sentence of the profile is "PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM." It goes on like this.
One of today's leaks comes out of Colombia, where in December 2007, president Alvaro Uribe agreed to an "encounter zone" in which to retrieve hostages taken by the paramilitary group FARC that at the time included Ingrid Betancourt. More surprising is the $100 million (US) set aside in a fund as an incentive for FARC members to release hostages and leave the group. In another cable released today, Uribe, during the visit of an American delegation led by Harry Reid, Uribe compared the threat Hugo Chavez posed to Latin America to the threat Hitler posed to Europe.
In a cable from April 2004, Panama's Supreme Court voted 8-1 that it lacked jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli arms smuggler Shimon Yalin Yelinek in the transfer of arms from Nicaragua to Colombia, despite the fact that he was living in Panama, that he was alleged with falsifying Panamanian National Police documents, and that they had used a boat registered to Panama. The cable notes charges that all eight majority judges received bribes to vote the way they did. At the time of the cable, Yelinek was also under investigation by America's DEA on money-laundering accusations. (Yelinek is at large to this day, supplying support to the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico's drug war.)
In a cable from June 2006, Ban Ki-Moon, in his days prior to becoming Secretary-General of the United Nations, offered congratulations for the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That's about all there is to that cable, but that's all one really needs to wonder if that's something becoming of a guy who'd go on to be put in charge of an organization dedicated to world peace.
A cable from January 2003 shows that supposed illegal immigrants from Pakistan within the United States, persecuted by anti-Arab attitudes in a post-9/11 America, and fearful of deportation back to Pakistan if they made themselves known in any way to the INS, re-defected to Canada to seek political asylum. The cable makes no mention of how those requests turned out.
And let's finish out with a February 2008 cable from the consulate in Kolkata, India, mentioning that in 2007, it rejected about 60% of applications for religious worker visas. Why? The applicants weren't actually religious workers. In some cases, the problem was as simple as being a maintenance guy who wasn't partaking in any actual religious duties at their place of worship, or not living within the consulate's jurisdiction. In other cases, though, people went so far as to make up a place of worship so they could claim it to the consulate. Not only didn't it work, but they'll likely have some interesting questions to answer once they meet whoever's in charge of them metaphysically.
The news organizations that don't have the entire stack of cables notwithstanding, so far 11,218 of the 251,287 cables have been released. That's 4.46% of the total.
That said, let's go browsing. Again, we're linking directly to the cables, so click with care.
First, let's just note the oldest cable in the group (for now), coming out of 1966. It comes out of Argentina, dealing with national jurisdictions in coastal waters. Argentine legislation under consideration at the time would claim territory six miles offshore, and 200 miles as "preferential". The Argentine navy claimed that it would soon be standard throughout the Western Hemisphere. (The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea set a maximum of 12 miles where a country can exert total control, a further 12 miles for more limited control, and an exclusive economic zone of 200 miles, which gives a country the rights to resources but doesn't let them restrict access. So Argentina wasn't too far off.)
The second-oldest is from February 1972, dealing with the sale of F-4E fighter jets to Iran. Ah, Cold War. How morally ambiguous you made us.
A psychological profile of Iranians in general made in 1979, written by one Victor Tomseth, isn't overly flattering. As you'd think back then. It was leaked way back in November, but it's the first you've likely heard of it. The first sentence of the profile is "PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM." It goes on like this.
One of today's leaks comes out of Colombia, where in December 2007, president Alvaro Uribe agreed to an "encounter zone" in which to retrieve hostages taken by the paramilitary group FARC that at the time included Ingrid Betancourt. More surprising is the $100 million (US) set aside in a fund as an incentive for FARC members to release hostages and leave the group. In another cable released today, Uribe, during the visit of an American delegation led by Harry Reid, Uribe compared the threat Hugo Chavez posed to Latin America to the threat Hitler posed to Europe.
In a cable from April 2004, Panama's Supreme Court voted 8-1 that it lacked jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli arms smuggler Shimon Yalin Yelinek in the transfer of arms from Nicaragua to Colombia, despite the fact that he was living in Panama, that he was alleged with falsifying Panamanian National Police documents, and that they had used a boat registered to Panama. The cable notes charges that all eight majority judges received bribes to vote the way they did. At the time of the cable, Yelinek was also under investigation by America's DEA on money-laundering accusations. (Yelinek is at large to this day, supplying support to the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico's drug war.)
In a cable from June 2006, Ban Ki-Moon, in his days prior to becoming Secretary-General of the United Nations, offered congratulations for the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That's about all there is to that cable, but that's all one really needs to wonder if that's something becoming of a guy who'd go on to be put in charge of an organization dedicated to world peace.
A cable from January 2003 shows that supposed illegal immigrants from Pakistan within the United States, persecuted by anti-Arab attitudes in a post-9/11 America, and fearful of deportation back to Pakistan if they made themselves known in any way to the INS, re-defected to Canada to seek political asylum. The cable makes no mention of how those requests turned out.
And let's finish out with a February 2008 cable from the consulate in Kolkata, India, mentioning that in 2007, it rejected about 60% of applications for religious worker visas. Why? The applicants weren't actually religious workers. In some cases, the problem was as simple as being a maintenance guy who wasn't partaking in any actual religious duties at their place of worship, or not living within the consulate's jurisdiction. In other cases, though, people went so far as to make up a place of worship so they could claim it to the consulate. Not only didn't it work, but they'll likely have some interesting questions to answer once they meet whoever's in charge of them metaphysically.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Do You Know Aboot How Fast You Were Going, Sir?
Not overly in the mood for a big piece today, so it's YouTube time. I give you a timelapse of a trip from Montreal to Vancouver in eight minutes.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Olympics: Day 9- Who's Terry Fox?
Today, let's rewind all the way back to the Opening Ceremony.
No, no, we already talked about the cauldron. Back up a bit further to when the Olympic Flag was brought in. Eight Canadians were selected to help carry the flag into BC place, among them Donald Sutherland, Bobby Orr, and Jacques Villeneuve.
Also among them: Betty Fox, mother of one Terry Fox of Winnipeg. If you're American, this was likely just some random footnote, some guy you've never heard of. In fact, Meredith Vieira confused him with Michael J. Fox.
If you're Canadian, though, there's a good chance you either welled up or commenced with a standing ovation. On the Penny Arcade boards during the Ceremony, I was hearing speculation that the final torchbearer might be not just Betty, but a Terry Fox hologram.
So who's Terry Fox?
In 1977, Fox lost his right leg to a form of cancer called osteosarcoma; it was amputated to keep the cancer from spreading. This was not a good thing for a man who would participate in just about any sport you placed in front of him. Track, swimming, basketball, baseball, soccer, rugby, it was sports. After losing the leg, Fox wanted to keep participating in sports, but as an amputee, competitve sports would be a problem.
The solution: run solo. In fact, not just run solo, but run coast-to-coast across Canada. And while he was at it, raise money for cancer research. He called it the Marathon of Hope, with the goal of raising $1 (Canadian dollars, of course) from every Canadian citizen.
At the time, in addition to the amputated leg, Fox had a heart condition, left ventricular hypertrophy, or 'athlete's heart', carrying symptoms of dizzy spells, double vision and shortness of breath. Long story short, Fox's doctor warned him that with the kind of stress his heart would be under during the Marathon of Hope, he might not complete the run and in fact die trying. Fox's response was, he's already got those symptoms anyway, so why not.
So with a bad heart and a different leg than he started life with, Fox set off applying for sponsors to help pay for the run (which he promptly got, though he turned down unsolicited endorsements; they would detract from the goal of public awareness) and set off for St. John's, Newfoundland.
On April 12, 1980, Fox dipped his prosthetic leg in the Atlantic Ocean, with the intent of dipping it into the Pacific Ocean once he arrived at his destination of Victoria, British Columbia (not far from Vancouver). He also took two bottles of Atlantic Ocean water- one to keep, one to pour into the Pacific. His intended pace was a standard marathon every day- 26.2 miles. Every day. Across Canada. With the entire country cheering him every step of the way, recieving a hero's welcome when he entered Ontario.
He would not make it.
On September 1, Day 143, near Thunder Bay, Ontario, Fox was forced to stop. The cancer had returned, and progressed to his lungs. His right lung had a tumor the size of a golf ball; his left lung had one the size of a lemon. He had run 3,339 miles at a pace of 23.3 miles per day, just short of half of his goal.
It was enough for Canada.
On September 9, CTV organized a telethon on Fox's behalf; they raised $10.5 million CAD in one day. It was only the start; by February 1981 Canadians had raised $24.17 million CAD- which, by the way, would meet Fox's goal of $1 per Canadian.
Fox would live to see it, but not by much; the cancer claimed him on June 28th, at the age of 22.
Every year since, a Terry Fox Run is held in various locations around the world; to date nearly $500 million CAD has been raised in his name. If you'd like to add to that, head on over. Fox has been awarded the Companion of the Order of Canada, the Order of the Dogwood, Canadian of the Year, Canadian of the Decade, and when CBC ran a TV special, The Greatest Canadian, Fox placed second, behind only Tommy Douglas, and conspiracy theories exist as to why Douglas beat Fox.
In case you're wondering, Wayne Gretzky placed 10th, just behind Alexander Graham Bell, who in turn placed two spots below Don Cherry, commentator for Hockey Night In Canada.
On the 25th anniversary of the Marathon, Canada introduced a one-dollar coin honoring the run.
And you will see Fox's name again in these Games. The Terry Fox Award will be handed out on Day 16, next Saturday, to be awarded to "someone who is the epitome of determination in motion, who pushed on no matter what the pain or obstacles in their path and touched Canada and the world by displaying humility and selflessness in their treatment of others both on and off the field of play – a veritable hero.”
You will also see Fox on ESPN; as part of their 30 For 30 series, Steve Nash will narrate the documentary Into The Wind.
Oh, and one more thing.
Steve Fonyo, a man from Montreal who lost his left leg to cancer at age 12, was inspired by Fox, taking note of the fact that Fox had to stop near Thunder Bay. He resolved to finish the job Fox started, and over the course of 14 months, from March 31, 1984 to May 29, 1985, Fonyo completed the Journey For Lives, running the same St. John's-to-Victoria route. He was originally called a copycat, and ran in Fox's shadow, but once he made it past Thunder Bay, he won his own amount of respect, eventually raising $13 million CAD, and was awarded an Order of Canada of his own later in 1985. However, he would have it revoked in 2009 after it turned out that, run or no run, he was no Terry Fox; he battled a cocaine addiction and was convicted on a series of charges including impaired driving, driving without a license, aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, writing bad checks, violating probation, and violating parole.
No, no, we already talked about the cauldron. Back up a bit further to when the Olympic Flag was brought in. Eight Canadians were selected to help carry the flag into BC place, among them Donald Sutherland, Bobby Orr, and Jacques Villeneuve.
Also among them: Betty Fox, mother of one Terry Fox of Winnipeg. If you're American, this was likely just some random footnote, some guy you've never heard of. In fact, Meredith Vieira confused him with Michael J. Fox.
If you're Canadian, though, there's a good chance you either welled up or commenced with a standing ovation. On the Penny Arcade boards during the Ceremony, I was hearing speculation that the final torchbearer might be not just Betty, but a Terry Fox hologram.
So who's Terry Fox?
In 1977, Fox lost his right leg to a form of cancer called osteosarcoma; it was amputated to keep the cancer from spreading. This was not a good thing for a man who would participate in just about any sport you placed in front of him. Track, swimming, basketball, baseball, soccer, rugby, it was sports. After losing the leg, Fox wanted to keep participating in sports, but as an amputee, competitve sports would be a problem.
The solution: run solo. In fact, not just run solo, but run coast-to-coast across Canada. And while he was at it, raise money for cancer research. He called it the Marathon of Hope, with the goal of raising $1 (Canadian dollars, of course) from every Canadian citizen.
At the time, in addition to the amputated leg, Fox had a heart condition, left ventricular hypertrophy, or 'athlete's heart', carrying symptoms of dizzy spells, double vision and shortness of breath. Long story short, Fox's doctor warned him that with the kind of stress his heart would be under during the Marathon of Hope, he might not complete the run and in fact die trying. Fox's response was, he's already got those symptoms anyway, so why not.
So with a bad heart and a different leg than he started life with, Fox set off applying for sponsors to help pay for the run (which he promptly got, though he turned down unsolicited endorsements; they would detract from the goal of public awareness) and set off for St. John's, Newfoundland.
On April 12, 1980, Fox dipped his prosthetic leg in the Atlantic Ocean, with the intent of dipping it into the Pacific Ocean once he arrived at his destination of Victoria, British Columbia (not far from Vancouver). He also took two bottles of Atlantic Ocean water- one to keep, one to pour into the Pacific. His intended pace was a standard marathon every day- 26.2 miles. Every day. Across Canada. With the entire country cheering him every step of the way, recieving a hero's welcome when he entered Ontario.
He would not make it.
On September 1, Day 143, near Thunder Bay, Ontario, Fox was forced to stop. The cancer had returned, and progressed to his lungs. His right lung had a tumor the size of a golf ball; his left lung had one the size of a lemon. He had run 3,339 miles at a pace of 23.3 miles per day, just short of half of his goal.
It was enough for Canada.
On September 9, CTV organized a telethon on Fox's behalf; they raised $10.5 million CAD in one day. It was only the start; by February 1981 Canadians had raised $24.17 million CAD- which, by the way, would meet Fox's goal of $1 per Canadian.
Fox would live to see it, but not by much; the cancer claimed him on June 28th, at the age of 22.
Every year since, a Terry Fox Run is held in various locations around the world; to date nearly $500 million CAD has been raised in his name. If you'd like to add to that, head on over. Fox has been awarded the Companion of the Order of Canada, the Order of the Dogwood, Canadian of the Year, Canadian of the Decade, and when CBC ran a TV special, The Greatest Canadian, Fox placed second, behind only Tommy Douglas, and conspiracy theories exist as to why Douglas beat Fox.
In case you're wondering, Wayne Gretzky placed 10th, just behind Alexander Graham Bell, who in turn placed two spots below Don Cherry, commentator for Hockey Night In Canada.
On the 25th anniversary of the Marathon, Canada introduced a one-dollar coin honoring the run.
And you will see Fox's name again in these Games. The Terry Fox Award will be handed out on Day 16, next Saturday, to be awarded to "someone who is the epitome of determination in motion, who pushed on no matter what the pain or obstacles in their path and touched Canada and the world by displaying humility and selflessness in their treatment of others both on and off the field of play – a veritable hero.”
You will also see Fox on ESPN; as part of their 30 For 30 series, Steve Nash will narrate the documentary Into The Wind.
Oh, and one more thing.
Steve Fonyo, a man from Montreal who lost his left leg to cancer at age 12, was inspired by Fox, taking note of the fact that Fox had to stop near Thunder Bay. He resolved to finish the job Fox started, and over the course of 14 months, from March 31, 1984 to May 29, 1985, Fonyo completed the Journey For Lives, running the same St. John's-to-Victoria route. He was originally called a copycat, and ran in Fox's shadow, but once he made it past Thunder Bay, he won his own amount of respect, eventually raising $13 million CAD, and was awarded an Order of Canada of his own later in 1985. However, he would have it revoked in 2009 after it turned out that, run or no run, he was no Terry Fox; he battled a cocaine addiction and was convicted on a series of charges including impaired driving, driving without a license, aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, writing bad checks, violating probation, and violating parole.
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