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?

CMA/CNA Media Awards

Excellence in Local Reporting...

Health stories brought to light by excellence in reporting

The subtle addition of information

Favourite subtle addition of information of the week goes to my co-worker Tessa Holloway for the way she slipped in MP Randy Hoback was on vacation.

"Our constituents have more concerns on their minds," he said by phone Tuesday from California, where he is vacationing. "They want us to concentrate on jobs, get people back to work, and get the budget back in order. And that's what I'll focus on when I get back to Parliament and that's what I'm focusing on now."

The Globe and Mail called her the other day to see if he was still away...
See the original article here.

Helping Haiti

This morning I listened to CBC’s The Current as the host interviewed Jean-Louis Warnholz on economic opportunities in Haiti.
He listed off mango exports, tourism and the garment industry as major economic benefits to the nation that were just starting to grow before the earthquake.
I waited for Anna Maria Tremonti to take Warnholz to task.
“Garment industry, who is he kidding,” I thought.
The opportunity passed her by as she asked about Mango production.
So I will fill in the blanks.
The so-called garment industry in Haiti produces the GAP shirts, Levi Jeans and a number of Disney products. It is low-pay, long hours and bad conditions, in short sweatshops in free-trade zones. They are set up to benefit the corporations that use them, not support a society in need of stability.
In 1996 workers in the FTZ made about 28 cents a day. Now, they might make up to $1 or $2 a day, but not likely.
The very reason Haiti is in so much trouble is because it has been abused a place for cheap labour and given unfair treatments from the West for decades.
That needs to change if we really want to support the country.
Let not use this earthquake as a time to ram through policy change in the very same ‘shock and awe’ way the US did in Iraq.
Throwing the doors open to more transnational corporations, paying significantly below a living wage is not going to help Haitians get back on their feet now, or if something occurs again in the future.

Torch Relay

The day the Olympic torch came to town.

Once I got over the rampant commercialism I really enjoyed the torch run and as it was lit for the briefest of moments I felt connected to people all across the country.

Then the announcer said Coca Cola needed a big round of applause.

... another day older and deeper in debt

I have two degrees that came after six years of international experience
I have one year of international journalism experience
And am well into my second year of daily reporting
What does that get me?
Enough income to qualify for the low income credit handed out by the Saskatchewan Government.

*sigh*

How's the weather over there?

It is so cold, it hurts.
How does cold hurt, you ask?
Well for all you warm people from somewhere other than north-central Saskatchewan and don’t understand what -35 C actually means, I’ll tell you.

1. When you spend two seconds outside, even while wearing gloves, your fingers start to freeze. It makes my knuckles ache.
2. The cold wind literally sucks the moisture out of you. I have cold rashes and dry skin on my hands, face, lips, hips, arms and parts of the body you just really don’t want dried, cracking skin.
3. When you breathe in, it feels cold all the way down to your lungs.
4. You shake and your teeth chatter uncontrollably.
5. Snow hides nails, so when frantically jogging across the parking lot to get out of the cold, you step on an old board and puncture both your shoe and the bottom of your foot with a rusty nail.

Admittedly the last one was less of the cold hurting and more of my being a klutz, but I wouldn’t have taken the route I did except to cut down time and get out of the cold.
The good news is I have had a tetanus shot in the last 10 years.
The bad news is that it’s still really cold.