Prince Rupert is a northern community in transition.

The city is increasingly at the centre of a global trade corridor connecting Asia and North America. An increase in the movement of goods and resources between the continents has allowed the Port of Prince Rupert to attract a multi-million dollar container port facility.

Prince Rupert didn’t even crack the top-20 of a recent survey of Canada’s busiest ports.

That’s about to change.

Is Prince Rupert ready?

Press the “play” button in the middle of the screen below to watch the video.

This is originally from a UNBC Political Science course that was hosted in Prince Rupert.

We’re on strike.

More info: PRDTU and BCTF.

… Cops staked out a bar in the hope of finding a journalist drunk. The journalist in question, Edmonton newspaper columnist Kerry Diotte, wasn’t suspected of involvement in any crime. But Diotte had written a column criticizing the police force’s radar and camera technology as being more of a cash cow for the force than an effective measure against road fatalities, and the story enraged the local constabulary.

from: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/22/traffic_cops_bar_stakeout/

and

The police broke the law when they used a restricted database to obtain information on the journalist (who, much to the dismay of the police, had a clean record). The police were also unsuccessful in their attempt to bust the journalist.

from: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/21/creepy_cops_violate_.html

Original on the politech mailing list “photo radar corruption scandal”:

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200509/msg00344.html

If crude costs are really 42 % of the cost of gas prices, why does a 24 % increase in crude costs cause an 85 % increase in retail gas prices?

Graph of oil prices in the last three months:

Graph of gas prices in the last three months:

Market forces have nothing to do with retail gas prices — if they did, then all the gas stations in town wouldn’t have the exact same price.

Follow the discussion on HTMF.

Last week, when gas prices jumped 8 cents a litre in Prince Rupert, 3 out of 4 gas stations in town raised their prices. Despite no deliveries of new expensive gas, Chevron, Esso, and Petro-Canada stations all raised their prices.

The Mohawk station kept the old price, at least for half a day. Driving around town, absolutely nobody was buying gas at the 3 expensive stations. There was a huge lineup at the Mohawk station. Business was good — people were going into the store and buying lots of stuff, and the other stations and stores were largely deserted.

Guess what? By the end of the day, Mohawk raised its price too (even though Mohawk’s costs hadn’t increased — there hadn’t been any fuel deliveries). Business dropped again.

Is there an understanding between the gas retailers that they all have to sell at the exact same price? There are no market forces at work here, no supply and demand, no small business practices or anything like that. It just doesn’t make sense.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

Mayor Ray Nagin uncensored.

BBC’s Matt Wells: New Orleans crisis shames Americans

Telus has decided that censorship is in the best interests of its customers. It appears that they are blocking access to www.voices-for-change.com and www.telusscabs.ca. These are union-related websites, and Telus would prefer that, in light of their current labour dispute, its customers not be able to access these sites.

Who knows? Perhaps people who visited this site could see that the workers have been without a contract for 5 years, or maybe Telus’s customers would be able to see both sides of the labour dispute.

The question I have, though, is why are we not able to view these sites in Prince Rupert? Is Telus censoring Citytel’s internet access?

Links to more information on the “Voices for change” site (which you won’t be able to view if you’re using Citytel or Telus):

http://www.voices-for-change.com/news/news_comments.asp?NewsID=53

Story on Boing Boing: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/24/phone_company_blocks.html

This is what a traceroute from outside of Citytel/Telus to www.voices-for-change.com looks like:

Pretty normal. Works fine. In this case, it was from within PLnet, which is part of the BC Government network.

Here’s another traceroute from Sympatico Internet Service (in Vancouver):

Again, pretty normal, it works fine.

But here’s the same traceroute from my home computer, which is connected to a Citytel ADSL line:

Notice where the connection breaks?

What’s going on here?

Here’s what Citytel’s Prince Rupert customers would see if they weren’t censored:

Update: Discussion forum on HTMF — local Prince Rupert web forum.

Mary Lynn Young argues that Prince Rupert’s container port may be dead in the water in her July 21, 2005 Globe and Mail editorial. Discussion on HTMF’s forums.