Git your souvenir oilsands globe here!

The pitch (yeah, eh, eh, eh):



The innovator is Dan Murphy.

For extra fun, enter the search term "A Celebration of Tarsands!" at  youtube.

The used

I was reading this essay by Arundhati Roy (h/t Yves Smith). It's a (typically for Roy) very long, but quite interesting read. I don't agree with all of it, but this bit stood out for me:

Mischievously, when the government or sections of the Corporate Press want to run a smear campaign against a genuine people’s movement, like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, or the protest against the Koodankulam nuclear reactor, they accuse these movements of being NGOs receiving “foreign funding”. They know very well that the mandate of most NGOs, in particular the well-funded ones, is to further the project of corporate globalisation, not thwart it.

The rise of this talking point in Canada is sort of telling. Canadians need to realize that while they are very, very much better off than the average Indian, being primarily extractors of goods for the benefit of others (and not even establishing a decent-sized sovereign wealth fund or charging nearly enough royalties...) puts them firmly in the category of the used, not the users, in our dog-eat-dog global economy, which is not a good place to be.

Natural welfare "queens"

The "Welfare Queen" moniker is an American meme with both racist and sexist components that was intended to arouse the ire of ordinary people against small-time free riders in order to distract from the long-standing effort to make it possible for big-time free riders to get away with robbing the American public blind.

What does this have to do with Canada?

We keep hearing that the "political center" of Canada is shifting Westward, and that Ontario's manufacturing economy is in the doldrums and that it is a have-not province. And we keep hearing that this is fuelling the political shift to the right. If so, this situation is merely confirmation of something we already knew: that right-wing populist politics is only possible in the presence of large-scale free riding. In this case, the free riding is on oil, oil, and more oil---because it no longer pays to be an actual entrepreneur in (foolishly) export-dependent Canada.

The Canadian right is all about being the true welfare "queens"*---the welfare "queens" of nature, of the dinosaur plants that died so long ago. Of course, it is always the case that we living things subsist on and affect the world in unpredictable ways; but we must never pretend that it is anything other than what it is.

Now if there's anything that will fracture the Reformatory crypto-coalition, it is that fact: will Ontario and the Rest-of-Canada (relative to resource extracting provinces) share in that welfare-"queendom"? I thought that was taboo.

*In reality, welfare "kings" more than anything else.

As expected ... (with update).

assorted righwingnutz, teabaggers, hatriots and various Republicon ideologues are busy spinning conspiracy theories and blaming .... well, read the shrieeeks and judge for yourselves.

From Mother Jones: Rash 'Fatboy' Limbaugh suggests the explosion of the oil rig was a deliberate sabotage.

It appears the Wall Street Journal has determined the environmentalists are at fault (and not deliberate cost-cutting, shoddy, dodgy practices by the drilling companies) for insisting that rigs be located as far as possible from populated areas and fragile eco-systems.

There's even fatuous glurge from $arah Palin.

Finally, the Boston Globe has heart-wrenching photographs of the calamitous oil deluge slip-sliding its way towards Louisiana.

Lunatic rightwing conspiracy theory alert - fern hill found this gem. A grim report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform ...

As if world politics were not murky enough. Nonetheless, a more interesting plot device than those plaguing season 8 of 24.