Sanctions

Sanctions, like boycotts and blockades, only work when the government or ruling party (military of individual) cares about their people.
In the case of North Korea – and it’s not that I want to judge Kim Jong Il but – I would suggest the leadership doesn’t care. Millions of people starving to death over the past decades are only the beginning of evidence of this.
So as every nation decides to side with South Korea and up their sanctions the only people that are going to suffer are the average person. The rich will have ways around it and the leaders don’t care.
With more than $200 million not showing up in the country, that's a lot of people to suffer.
The problem is I can’t come up with a better way to tell North Korea that it can’t blow up South Korean ships.

Wildfire

There is a fire that has been burning just north of Prince Albert.

Only one house was lost (the origin of the fire) and no one was hurt.

Here are some of my photos for the paper.

Oil Spills

Ever since I was a kid I’ve thought the worst thing that could happen to the ocean was an oil spill.
The images on TV of people soaping up birds after the Exxon Valdez oil spill forever stuck in my mind.
Even as an adult I feel badly when I hear about after math of the explosion of the British Petroleum rig located off the coast of Louisiana.
According to press reports, “The Gulf Coast is experiencing an ecological disaster … Coastal areas outside of the immediate spill region will be impacted too.”
Reuters warns that some oil is in the Loop Current already "which could carry the oil down to the Florida Keys, Cuba, and East Coast."
It’s horrifying to think of all the beautiful water tainted by oil, but I also hope this will open people’s eyes
In North America we use so much oil and yet so many people life their lives without a thought of how it gets to their cars or how else it’s used as energy.
Around the globe people experience the negative effects of the over consumption of petroleum by the developed world.
Photographs in an exhibition called War Photo, show the mess in Nigeria, where Shell has operated for years with out regard for the environment or human lives — spills that continue for weeks, making farming in impossible, flames burning from leaks and a slick covering the top of bodies of water.
There is so much damage that will be done by this latest of oil spills but maybe it will be the thing that finally shows people why they need to reduce dependency, why alternative energies should be looked at and what goes on in the rest of the world.

Snow warnings in May

Just a quick question -- what am I doing here?

It’s not some great existentialist question.

No this has more to do with wondering why I am living in a place that was 20 C yesterday and snowing today.

And not just a little snow either.

I’m counting down the days to Sudan and Uganda. Then what?