That we should ask our members of parliament, and ourselves.

Courtesy of The Tyee.

One of my favourite shows on television is PBS’s Frontline.

It premiered a great doc last night on Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster last March.

Nuclear Aftershocks raises several important questions about what happened in Japan, and whether the disaster should have been anticipated and prevented. It also shows how many countries, including the United States, have to decide what to do next with nuclear-generated power in light of Japan’s nuclear meltdown.

Japan appears to have taken several large steps away from nuclear power as a direct consequence of what happened, and could phase out nuclear reactors entirely. Law makers in Germany have shifted away from nuclear too, buttressed by powerful public opinion and fear.

The doc shows that–at this point–there is no environmentally sustainable alternative to nuclear energy, which can generate enough clean power to bridge the gap between sources such as wind and solar, and what is required for base energy requirements.

Germany for one is looking at using coal to bridge that gap.

The questions: are we willing to risk the consequences of future nuclear disasters? Can we afford not to?

Here’s a must read from The Tyee and Salon investigating the attack on U.S. carbon standards led by big oil and an Albertan diplomat in Washington.

It raises an important question: should Canadians be comfortable with this country’s diplomats working with big oil lobbyists to keep the U.S. addicted to oil from the Alberta oil sands?

Check out this exceptional read in The Tyee by a friend of mine. It’s a peace of journalism that I’ve been familiar with for some time now, and I’m happy to see it unveiled for everyone to read.

It opens a telling window into life as a transgendered young person, and is a good reminder that our identity is ours to be exercised as we see fit. To hell with what anybody else thinks. The subjects, Amy and Gavin, are inspirational.

I’m looking forward to the other parts in the series.

It’s been awhile since I listened to Tool’s Lateralus.

I’m not sure that music can get better than this.

For those who didn’t come across this in July when the documentary first premiered on Al Jazeera’s People & Power, our film Freedom from Pain is still available on AJE’s website.

The doc was reported and filmed by students, myself included, from the University of British Columbia’s School of Journalism.

We traveled to India, Uganda and the Ukraine to figure out why the so many people–as many as 80 per cent of the world’s population–goes without pain killers when they need them the most.

If you’re moved by what you see, please spread it around.

Fascinating topic and a great read in The Tyee about social media, the Vancouver riot and mass disclosure.

Orwell’s telescreens from 1984 really have become a part of our world. How prophetic.

Woke up this morning to find this two-part piece in The Tyee.

Written by Timothy Taylor, it’s a story about sensitivity, compassion and hope set within a situation which at first blush seems devoid of all those things.

In it is perhaps a universal lesson on how to be.

“The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject his image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man, nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensible condition for the quest for human completion.”

– Paulo Freire The Pedagogy of the Oppressed

This week two Russian bombers approached Canadian airspace about 450 km off the coast of Newfoundland. The bombers were spotted by NORAD and two Canadian CF-18s were dispatched to intercept the pair of TU-95 Bears, according to a report in the Globe and Mail.

Nothing became of it, and the Russians claimed it was part of a training exercise and Canadian airspace was never breached.

This is the type of activity that former CF-18 pilot, Maj.-Gen. Tom Lawson, was telling me about last week. The saber-rattling is becoming less of a transparent choreography—as he put it—and more secretive on the part of the Russians.

Of course, we must ask how often these types of things happen, and how often the Canadian Forces decides to report on them. Curious to have the Canadian Air Force in the news at the very same time the government is trying to drum up support for the $16 billion-dollar strike fighter project.

*According to the Globe’s Daniel Leblanc it didn’t take long for the incident—one that occurs around a dozen times per year—to make it into the Conservatives Friday talking points as evidence supporting the highly contested F-35 procurement.