Features

Alberta tar sands illegal under Treaty 8: First Nations

Oct 222012

1899 treaty honoured Alberta natives' right to practice traditional lifeways.

by Kristin Moe

Fort Chipewyan is a small indigenous community on the edge of vast Lake Athabasca in Alberta’s remote north, accessible only by plane in summer and by snow road in winter. The town is directly downstream from the Alberta tar sands — Canada’s wildly lucrative, hotly debated, and environmentally catastrophic energy project.

Residents say that tar sands mining is not only dangerous but illegal because it violates the rights laid out in Treaty 8, an agreement signed in 1899 by Queen Victoria and various First Nations. Their legal challenge to the tar sands project could have a powerful impact on the legal role of treaties with First Nations people.

Thinking outside the nuclear box

Oct 212012

Features

Expensive, unreliable nuclear power has priced itself off the market.

by Gordon Edwards

Increasingly, nuclear power appears be a future technology whose time is past.

This was already evident as far back as 1978 — the last year that a CANDU nuclear plant was ordered in North America. In that year the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning — in its Report on Nuclear Power in Ontario entitled A Race Against Time — summed up two years of hearings by saying: “Far from offering energy self-sufficiency, nuclear power at best offers uncertainty.” And so it has proved to be.

Government to amend Indian Act its own way

Oct 202012

Features

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo, from CBC

Assembly of First Nations National Chief says Bill C-428 is more unilateralism.

from the Assembly of First Nations

(Ottawa, ON) – The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) released the following statement from National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo today following yesterday’s announcement of Government support for Bill C-428, the Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act.

“We all agree we need to move away from the Indian Act, but any efforts must be led by First Nations and done with First Nations, not for First Nations.

Agricultural cooperatives vital to fighting world hunger

Oct 182012

Features

World food day celebrates co-ops' success in relieving hunger.

from the Food and Agriculture Organization

ROME, October 16, 2012 — Agricultural cooperatives, already enriching millions of small-scale farmers, could expand and make an even greater contribution against poverty and hunger, if they were given the right support by governments, civil society and academia.

That is the key message of this year's World Food Day, observed today in 150 countries. The theme this year focuses on "Agricultural cooperatives — key to feeding the world" and coincides with the International Year of Cooperatives. World Food Day also commemorates the date when FAO was founded in 1945.

Gar Alperovitz says the Great Transformation to co-operatives can save the US economy too.

The fight against hunger was given new impetus last week with the release of figures showing that, despite there being 132 million fewer hungry people in the world compared to 20 years ago, there are still nearly 870 million people who go without enough food every day.

There are still nearly 870 million people who go without enough food every day.

Pope Benedict XVI said in a message for World Food Day that given the human dimension, agricultural cooperatives are able to favour economic development that meet the most pressing local needs.

"Agricultural cooperatives have an alternative vision to those economic models that seem to have as their only goals, profit, the interests of the markets, the use of food crops for non-food purposes and the introduction of new food production technologies without the necessary precautions," the Pope said.

"The presence of cooperatives can put an end to the trend of speculation in essential food commodities intended for human consumption, and reduce the large-scale acquisition of arable lands that in many regions forces farmers off their land because by themselves they are too weak to defend their rights," he said.

The Pope's message was read by Archbishop Luigi Travaglino at a ceremony at FAO headquarters attended by dignitaries, heads of Rome-based UN agencies and special guests.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva emphasized the need to work for the total eradication of hunger, adding that many countries, in South America, Africa and Asia, are proving that it is possible.

The FAO chief threw his weight behind cooperatives as a major way to lift small-scale farmers out of poverty and hunger.

Graziano da Silva threw his weight behind cooperatives as a major way to lift small-scale farmers out of poverty and hunger. Although they produce most of the food in many countries, he said small-scale farmers had poor access to markets to sell their products, lack of bargaining power to buy inputs at better prices and a lack of access to financial services.

"Agricultural cooperatives can help smallholders overcome these constraints," he said. "Cooperatives play a crucial role in generating employment, reducing poverty, and improving food security, and contributing to the gross domestic product in many countries."

The FAO chief urged governments to do their part and "create conditions that allow producer organizations and cooperatives to thrive".

Gar Alperovitz video courtesy of Yes Magazine

Full planet, empty plates

Oct 182012

Features

Earth Policy Institute warns about the imminent food crisis.

by Lester R Brown

Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.

The world food situation is deteriorating. Grain stocks have dropped to a dangerously low level. The World Food Price Index has doubled in a decade. The ranks of the hungry are expanding. Political unrest is spreading.

On the demand side of the food equation, there will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night. And some 3 billion increasingly affluent people are moving up the food chain, consuming grain-intensive livestock and poultry products.

At the same time, water shortages and heat waves are making it more difficult for farmers to keep pace with demand. As grain-exporting countries ban exports to keep their food prices down, importing countries are panicking. In response, they are buying large tracts of land in other countries to grow food for themselves. The land rush is on.

Could food become the weak link for us as it was for so many earlier civilizations? The slideshow presentation below, based on Lester Brown's latest book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, explains why world food supplies are tightening and tells what we need to do about it.

The slides are designed to be shared, so feel free to pass along the link to others who might be interested. Use the slideshow to anchor a lesson in the classroom or to spread the word within your community on why and how we need to mobilize to fix our food system. You are welcome to modify it to suit your needs. We ask only that you appropriately credit Earth Policy Institute and the photographers, notably Yann Arthus-Bertrand, eminent French photographer and friend of EPI, whose works appear within.

If you find this tool useful, please let us know how you are using it in your community, classroom, or congregation by sending an e-mail to epi@earthpolicy.org. We may add your example to our ever-growing list of the many ways folks around the world are spreading the Plan B vision.

Remember, we all have a role to play. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.

Reference:

Slldeshow

The new geopolitics of food scarcity

Let’s talk about the Taliban…

Oct 182012

Features

$v\Code Pink's Medea Benjamin speaks$

CODEPINK monitors drones in Waziristan.

By Pam Bailey

Throughout my stay in Pakistan, I have been noting similarities in the challenges faced by the people in the frontier regions here and in Gaza. Both populations are under daily threat by foreign drones (US vs. Israel), the movement of both groups is tightly controlled, and both peoples are judged by the world based on internal factions branded as “extremist.”

Whenever I speak about Gaza, invariably I will sooner rather than later be confronted with a question about the violence wrought by Hamas, often to the extent that the sins of the Israeli occupation (a primary motivator of Hamas actions) are brushed to the side. With Pakistan, it’s the Taliban that most often is raised when I talk or write about the evil of US drone strikes. After all, how else, I am asked (even by some Pakistanis), can we destroy this dreaded terrorist group?

Interview with Malala’s former collaborator

Oct 152012

Features

The "Voice Of Swat Valley" blog dictated over safe phone.

from Radio Free Europe

As Malala Yousafzai clings to life following a gun attack by the Pakistani Taliban, people around the globe are paying homage to the 14-year-old's bravery in defending her and others' right to an education. One is Abdul Hai Kakar, a former BBC Urdu Service reporter and current RFE/RL Radio Mashaal broadcaster who helped bring Malala's message to the world's attention. Interview conducted by Frud Bezhan.

Pulling out of Iran, redux

Oct 152012

Features

Harper’s suprise embassy closure helps Netanyahu, hurts Obama.

by Paul Weinberg

Canada garnered brief international attention for closing its Tehran embassy just as war talk swirls around Iran, in the weeks before the November US presidential election.

Cuban Missile Crisis, 50 years later

Oct 152012

Features

The war that wasn't, was a game that never should have been played.

by Mel Watkins

Pick your war and the Harper government will celebrate it. Their attitude is, "Sure it was bloody, but war’s war, and we’re the better for it."

But might it not make more sense to celebrate the wars and the killing that didn’t happen? And the peace, the absence of war, that did? Memory matters, truly matters, if we are ever to learn and stay alive in the era of weapons of mass destruction. What we remember and how we remember it is far too important to be left to those who worship warriors and count the dead as part of the celebration.

Harperites disband ozone monitoring group

Oct 122012

Features

2012 is 25th anniversary of worldwide Montreal Protocol to protect ozone layer.

by Stephen Leahy

Thousands of people have avoided getting skin cancer thanks to Canadian scientists who invented the UV index and the gold-standard tool for measuring the thickness of the Earth's ozone layer. But now Canada's ozone science group no longer exists, victim of government budget cuts.

"Everyone who was still left in the ozone group has been re-assigned," said Prof Thomas Duck of the department of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Canada's Dalhousie University.

In 2011 Canada unexpectedly experienced its first ever ozone hole over the Arctic. "The ozone problem is not solved," Duck told the Guardian.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Montreal protocol, the international treaty that phased out chemicals that were destroying the ozone layer. Without the protocol skin would burn after a five-minute exposure to the sun in London or New York by the year 2065. Skin cancers would be at least 650 percent higher, Nasa has calculated.

2012 is also the 20th anniversary of the invention of the UV index that accurately forecasts UV levels. At least 25 countries' use some form of UV index to advise the public. Exposure to UV is main cause of the more than 1 million skin cancers that occur ever year according to the World Health Organisation.

Program cuts could compromise international efforts to monitor what is happening to the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

Rather than celebrate the anniversary of this vital scientific contribution, Stephen Harper's government instead choose to spend $28 million celebrating the War of 1812. The US invaded Canada when it was a British colony in 1812 and after a few battles the Americans went home.

Budget cuts to Environment Canada (EC), where the ozone science and monitoring are done, were $13.3m this year and will be $31.1m next year.

"There's been no celebration of Canada's scientific achievements. Never mind continuing to invest money into science," says Gordon McBean, a former assistant deputy minister of EC and president-elect of the International Council for Science.

"Canada can afford to do top-notch environmental science but this government has simply chosen not to make it at priority," McBean said.

The Harper government cuts to the ozone programme were completely arbitrary, he said. Scientists were never consulted and it could compromise the international efforts to monitor what is happening to the Earth's protective ozone layer.

A spokesman for Environment Canada said: "On ozone research, we have a continuing research involvement, working with the World Meteorological Organization and others, to advance the global understanding of ozone levels. Our research continues to provide the scientific basis for services to Canadians, including the UV index."

He said that ozone monitoring was still taking place, an EC scientific review is being conducted of monitoring sites, and Canada had earlier this month reiterated its commitment to continuing to host the World Ozone and UV Data Centre of the WMO.

"Anyone who knows about the UV index thinks the inventors are among the most famous scientists in the world but no one knows who we are," says Tom McElroy who created the index at Environment Canada (EC) along with fellow EC scientists David Wardle and James Kerr in 1992. All are retired now.

"We developed the UV index in 1992 to give the public information about their potential exposure," McElroy said. "It's amazing how popular it became. I think it has really saved lives."

The UV index relies on another invention by McElroy, Wardle and Kerr, the Automated Brewer Ozone Spectrophotometer, the world's most accurate ground-based ozone measurement tool. First used 30 years ago, Brewers, as they are called, are now in use in more than 45 countries and a crucial part of the global ozone monitoring network.

All of those Brewers need to be regularly calibrated by the "Toronto Triad", three EC Brewers that no longer have the appropriate scientific oversight says Duck. "This will compromise the world's ozone monitoring capability. This is a serious issue."

This article appeared in the UK Guardian.

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