Another day, another missed opportunity.

None of our local candidates felt like answering my question about our provincial parks.  Canada is blessed with some of the largest and richest wilderness areas in the world; we owe it to the planet and our children to tend and protect them.  I’d like to see the candidates talk about this more.

In other social media news, the CIA joined Twitter

I can only speculate that this is another example of a political leader still thinking in terms of push-media and message discipline.  I wonder what the meeting looked like when they were planning this move.

Spy #1: “Hey, people don’t seem to like us very much.”

Spy #2: “Strange that.  I wonder why?”

Spy #1: “Do you think it has anything to do with the way we’ve assassinated people, lied repeatedly, performed chemical experiments on unsuspecting victims, overthrown elected governments and  used torture, kidnapping and murder as standard practice?  The way we’ve committed war crimes with impunity?

Spy #2: “Maybe – I suppose it could be because of the way that we managed to get ourselves appointed in charge of censoring the official report that describes the way we repeatedly tortured to death those in our custody?

Spy #1: “Doesn’t really sound plausible, does it?”

Spy #2: “No.   I bet it’s just because we don’t have a Twitter account.  We should get one of those things.”

Spy #1: “Good idea!  And make sure that our first tweet is an attempt at humour – that will show everyone that really we’re just a bunch of fun-loving guys, and not at all cold-blooded killers with no respect for the rule of law.”


I’m not sure that this is going how they expected.   The New York Review of Books is taking the opportunity to regularly ping @CIA with extracts from a damning Red Cross report on the agencies use of torture and secret prisons.  In an ideal world, the CIA would actually take this opportunity to enter into a balanced dialog; maybe explain some of their actions of the past 50 years; and who knows, even come to some comprehension of the horrific impact their human rights violations have had.

I suspect that’s even less likely than a politician responded to my tweets.  But I live in hope.