...that Canada is beginning to be reviled as much as the United States in the world. It's only taken 18 months of ham-fisted diplomacy and sucking up to the Bush Republicans to destroy an international reputation that took 60 years to develop. Till this past year, nations would generally welcome Canadian troops in to help stabilize a region. Now, it's becoming clear that that's a thing of the past. Canada's New Government (TM, Pat. Pend.) has seen to that. It's becoming clearer and clearer that the only thing that Harper and his merry band of Tories care about internationally is how the Bush Republicans think of them and the country.

It's becoming clearer and clearer why Harper prorogued parliament. It was so his government could start slashing budgets without anyone asking questions. First it was over at Environment Canada now its at the Department of National Defence. The Harper Conservatives, in an effort to show that their support for our troops extends only to yellow ribbon stickers on cars and wearing red on Fridays, is canceling an upgrade program to our long range maritime patrol aircraft. This after the program is half way through to completion. This is not the way to show support for the Canadian Forces.

In honour of it being International Talk Like a pirate day.... Avast...

You are The Cap'n!

Some men and women are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any scalawag who stands between them and unlimited power. You never met a man - or woman - you couldn't eviscerate. You are the definitive Man of Action, the CEO of the Seven Seas, Lee Iacocca in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. You're mission-oriented, and if anyone gets in the way, that's his problem, now isn't? Your buckle was swashed long ago and you have never been so sure of anything as your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off his head if he shows any sign of taking you on or backing down. If one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.



What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

In their never ending quest to maintain their "green" image, the federal Tories have cut funding to several wildlife programs of Environment Canada. Now I'm thinking, if you're trying to convince Canadians that you actually give a damn about the environment, cutting programs to monitor that environment might not be the action you want to be taking. However that's what the Harper Conservatives have just done. Cuts are affecting the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Network, the Migratory Bird Program and the National Wildlife Area program. Now the Harper government is claiming the cuts are needed so they can focus on climate change, but looking into things it shows the opposite.

So the royalty review report by a panel set up by the Alberta provincial government is now out. The ink is barely dry on the report and the oil industry is already spreading gloom and doom. This, of course was not unexpected for an industry that prior to the release of the report was parading it's CEO's through Calgary spreading the same gloom and doom about any change to the royalties. I even heard a caller to the CBC morning show here in Cowtown complain that the review was just a provincial version of the NEP. All this for a non-binding report that suggests we change our royalties from giveaway levels to fire-sale levels.

Mrs. Evil and I nipped away this weekend to Victoria so that she could partake in the Titanic Exhibit at the Royal BC Museum which I'm sure she'll be blogging all about so I won't get into that aspect of our trip here. Anyhow the reason I'm writing today is that one of the things I like about Victoria are the buskers. Now in my various trips to the city, I've seen busking pipers (who are out every time I'm here), even a busker with a full drum set set up in the inner harbour. This time there was a violin player, however he wasn't just a violin player, he was dressed up as Darth Vader playing a black violin. Now there's something you don't see every day. Picture under the cut.

So we have Elections Canada allowing Muslim women to keep their faces covered while they vote. Ever on the lookout to pick up a vote, our illustrious Prime Minister has waded in by stated that "We just adopted this past sitting in the spring, Bill C-31, a law designed to have the visual identification of voters. That's the purpose of the law. That was the law adopted, I think virtually unanimously by Parliament, and I think this decision goes in an entirely different direction." This begs the question, did Harper actually read the law that he voted for not once, but twice?

...Calgary oil execs are talking to the Liberals. Hey, what did the Tories expect, the energy trusts, who are used to having Conservative Parties wrapped around their little fingers, just go along with the new tax scheme? At least at the end of the article the Federal Finance Minster tried to blame the Liberals for the issue. Nice to see consistency there.

This past week has been quite interesting in the world of politics. We have the federal Tories moving to prorogue parliament and start a new session as well as here in the land of Tory, Alberta, the provincial Tories also doing some interesting things such as annoying the oil industry.

So about a month ago I took some astrophotos as part of my project to take photos of all 110 Messier objects. Yesterday I finally got around to looking at them and one caught my eye. A shot of M94, a galaxy in Canes Venatici, caught my eye. Now if you look at the picture below, it looks like there's an object glowing brightly beside the galaxy that looks a bit like a supernova.