The events of the past couple of months has me concerned about the direction our country is taking. We have the Alberta government not just spying on Albertans but also Americans in Montana as well as police forces in Quebec using police to infiltrate protests with the appearance that the police were trying to incite a riot. In both cases, the agencies involved initially denied any such activity, only to "come clean" when forced by evidence to the contrary. Thing is, how do we know they've truly come clean?

Click here.

Well it seems that the suspicions of the landowners against a new high-voltage power line were true. The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board was spying on them. For those of you who live outside Alberta, the AEUB is the provincial government body responsible for rubber stamping energy industry (oil or otherwise) development approvals. This board, while holding hearings on a proposed power line, has done everything it can to avoid hearing the voice of the landowners affected by the development. It shut them out of the room, surrounded them with "security", and now we find out that they used taxpayer dollars to spy on taxpayers opposed to the development.

Ed Stelmach has been trying to some extent to tell Albertans that he's not Ralph Klein. Well this latest move would seem to indicate that. By appointing a Suncor executive to be the assistant deputy minister for the oilsands sustainable development secretariat, the Stelmach government is showing that the Alberta Government is in the hip pocket of the oil industry. How is this different from the previous Klein administration? The Klein government at least tried to hid the fact that they were wrapped around the proverbial oil industry finger.

Well it looks like Harper's going to shuffle his cabinet again. Now normally I'd wait for the shuffle to happen before commenting, but since it would seem that no new ministers will get a chair at the cabinet table, there's no point in waiting. It's been only seven months since the last shuffle and one wonders what the point of this one is.

So there I am this morning down in my basement doing some tests on an electronic project I'm working on when the phone rings. On the other end of the line was a reporter from the local CTV station asking questions about the upcoming Perseid meteor shower and was I available to be interviewed about it. Long story short I ended up with some air time. What's cool is that CTV News Net picked up the story so about every 15 minutes or so, my smiling mug is on the screen describing a meteor shower. Cool!

With my holiday dwindling away, it's time to begin to look into the world of politics once again. Looking through the proactive disclosure for Environment Canada, I noticed a numbered Ontario company getting $54 815.00 of taxpayer money for "Other Prof. Serv. - Management consulting - OGD or programs". I was curious what the numbered company (1286756 Ontario Limited) did. This lead to a search on the web for this company, gaining further government contracts netting 1286756 Ontario Limited contracts of $123 432.23, and$94 870.00 for a total of $273 117.23 since January of 2007. So some mystery company in Ontario netted over a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money.

It's been a while since I've put finger to keyboard, but the last week of June is busy in the 'ol education biz and I was away visiting my mom till yesterday. Once I get caught up on the news I'll return to the regularly scheduled political ranting that is normally in this space. Till then I'll show some pics. Specifically, I bought a new telescope and while visiting my mom, managed to get a couple of shots. First light was of M13 and the next shot was M51.

Well the No Fly List is now in operation. I've already expressed my concerns here so I won't go into that for now. What I am writing about is the views of some of the commenters over at the CBC on this topic. While a lot of people are expressing concerns about the various issues over the No Fly List, some are basically rolling out the old lines such as:
WHY on earth would airport screening lists bother anyone unless you have something to hide?
or:
My stance has always been I would rather have 100 people inconvenienced to save a single life
These people seem to be missing something, that something is a respect for their own rights, and that is scarier than any possible terrorist threat.

...for the Alberta Conservative government announcements to start following their defeat at the hands of the Grits. First we have disaster relief for the cities suddenly, pardon the pun, flowing like water and sudden announcements of new schools for both Calgary and Edmonton. It almost seems like the Alberta Tories are starting to wake up after a 30 year slumber.