The Carney speech

“The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.

But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just.
…

The powerful have their power. But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together.”

Oh Canada! – let us not follow you.

Looking at the vaccination program in NZ, I feel that many people are focusing on the wrong things. The most dangerous period in pandemic life cycle – gaining a sufficient population immunity fast enough to stop the inevitable complacency that allows another wave of infections. Ontario appears to have managed to get a new wave of infection rising as they are trying to run their vaccination program. That is the last thing we need.

Pandemic: a flourishing enterprise. Business needs to get real.

A few weeks ago we were at 14 million cumulative confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide. A million more cases in just 4 days. Now a few weeks later, we are at 16 million confirmed cases worldwide. The lobbyists and business groups affected by our blocked borders need to get real. We won’t be opening our borders until we get a widely used vaccine later next year (at the earliest). It is too expensive to do so.

Alberta burning

The Canadian wildfire is “unprecedented” in its size and ferocity. There have been mass evacuations, and whole suburbs burnt out. Wildfires have doubled in Canada since the early 70’s – “And we’ve published work that states that this is because of human-caused climate change.”

Have a Drink Hoss!

So, by my understanding, in ‘three party’* Canada, the New Democratic Party sought the center and nosedived. Simultaneously, the Liberals moved left and […]

Canada and the TPP

Will the Liberals’ victory yesterday result in Canada dropping out of the TPP? Probably not. But Canadian farmers are going to push hard, creating an interesting opportunity for the Liberals.

NRT: Climate change: A carbon tax in action

The Greens promised to scrap the gutted and ineffective ETS and replace it with a carbon tax. National immediately claimed that the sky would fall if we stopped subsidising polluters and allowing them to rort us. But where it is used it has done exactly what it was designed to do: reduce emissions while lowering taxes on ordinary people. National just likes polluters?

Upcoming talk on Canadian student uprising

This Sunday hip hop artist and political activist Darius Mirshahi will be speaking in Auckland about the political situation in Canada and how the left are organising to resist Neo-Liberalism. Later he will be performing material which has lead to attention from Glen Beck and the Canadian police.

O Canada!

Canada is to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, making it one of 2 nations in the world to be formally outside it. What will National do when the inevitably large fines roll in for us under their eviscerated ETS?

Frack off

Bravo France, the first country in the world to ban fracking.  But for every step forward in this world, we seem to take two steps backwards…