best of 2011

Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity

It is a three-way tie. There was the priest broom brawl in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity; the Italian seismologists who were charged with manslaughter after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake; and the two last speakers of Ayapaneco, who don't like each other.

Stephen Anderson, former detective, testifies that NYPD routinely planted drugs on people to meet arrest quotas (eight officers arrested).

So far (2012): Charles Monnett, under investigation about melting arctic ice ('polarbeargate'), was finally reprimanded for forwarding an e-mail and otherwise cleared of scientific misconduct.

That charge should be brought to Ann Coulter, who confuses radon—or who really knows what—with {uranium, cesium, plutonium, polonium, strontium, radioactive iodine, sulphur, tellurium, helium or other fukushima cocktails}.

lisa raitt: strikes are sexy

Never mind about the AECL Candu binder; it wasn't the same as Maxime Bernier (Beauce) and the tits cleavage biker chick NATO files. Never mind about the sexy isotope shortage for cancer patients. Never mind about no one signing off on the CEO, Toronto Port Authority expenses or a $9000 lunch. And just never mind about proroguing (and even more proroguing, forty days and forty nights). btw, are MPs 'essential services'?

Geez. Electro-Motive plant in London (now closed) and its Caterpillar parent strike in Joliet, Illinois. Canada Post. Air Canada flight attendants. Pilots. Mechanics ("flying coffins" & Aveos outsourcing), baggage handlers, cargo agents. Canadian Pacific Railway and Pershing Square's 14.2% equity stake.

Welp. Saskatchewan essential services legislation deemed unconstitutional (07 Feb. 2012).

Recalibration: On January 19, 2010, Raitt moved from the Ministry of Natural Resources to the Labour Ministry.

The house was beginning to shake,
And good press it just did not make.
So Steve shut it down, Caused the country to frown. But then he was
saved by a quake.  

Nuclear workers: 900 scientists, engineers, technologists and technicians said 94+ per cent of members sanctioned the strike action on Thursday, May 3rd 2012: a stinging indictment of SNC-Lavalin's cavalier management style and brinkmanship bargaining. A union spokeswoman said Candu is looking to gut most parts of the collective agreement.

Ongoing: RCMP officers want to end a ban, in place since 1918, on Mounties forming a union or police association and having the right to collectively bargain. (Toronto Star, Nov 20, 2012.) "Toxic workplace": Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada (MPPAC), a merger of BC and ON associations, is expecting a ruling from the Ontario Court of Appeal in spring 2012.

Lay-offs: Canadian Space Agency. 100 staff and more to come? Speaking of SNC-Lavalin Defence Programs Inc. (AECL) and MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Inc., there's now a signed contract "to extend operational services for up to eight years for the Canadian Department of National Defence’s twelve Kingston-class Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels...Although their primary mission is coastal surveillance, the vessels perform a wide variety of operational tasks including search and rescue, fisheries and environmental monitoring, disaster relief, mine countermeasures and scientific research."

Does this make sense? The entire program of lay-offs in the public service is expected to cost Canadian taxpayers more than $2 billion.

Weird: Health care workers in Alberta have not had the legal right to strike since 1983.

salmon inquiry, 'events in Japan' & trout

The Cohen Commission (Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River) today heard from Kristi Miller, who's been under pressure it seems to say nothing public, like other scientists, about her study and federal government science... stuff. There appears to be a little funding problem.

A research program led by geneticist Kristi Miller which recently discovered a new virus that could be a factor in declining Fraser River sockeye has no funding to continue its work, the Cohen Commission heard Thursday. more (Vancouver Sun)

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued notification to media outlets that it was testing sockeye salmon for radiation levels in August and September 2011.

The federal government often refers to the reported meltdown of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima as "the events in Japan", rather than using more descriptive language. However, the words "nuclear crisis" appeared once in today's statement. more (Georgia Strait)

There was no spokesperson to take questions about the testing of 'this important commodity.'

In Yellowstone, between the lake and cutthroat trouts is a Judas team, 'a strike force in the biggest lake-trout-killing program in the nation.'