by Michael Byers
The World is the largest privately owned yacht on the planet. Flagged in the Bahamas, the 196-metre vessel is essentially a luxury condo complex, with 165 units valued at up to $13-million each.
Later this month, the ship will transit the Northwest Passage, at no small risk to its residents — and to Canada's reputation as a competent coastal state.
by Stephen Leahy for InterPress Service
With current trends leading the earth to disaster, world leaders and some 40,000 people converged on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June in the hope of charting a path towards a better, more sustainable future for everyone that many are calling the "green economy." Underlining the urgency, Sha Zukang, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, said more than a year before the summit began: "If we continue on our current path, we will bequeath material and environmental poverty, not prosperity, to our children and grandchildren."
by Kristin Moe
The column of people stretched out along the road that cut a straight line through the desert, and disappeared into a dusty yellow haze. This was an unnatural desert, human-made. A few decades ago, it was boreal forest, deep and cool. Now it's gray sand — a byproduct, I'm told, of the tar sands refining. The desert stretches out to the horizon, and seems to have no end.
by Yves Engler
Six and half years into Harper's Conservative government Canada has become so militaristic that the head of the armed forces can demand a new war and few bat an eye.
by David Swanson.
Last fall I helped organize a conference of experts on various areas of damage being done by the military industrial complex, resulting in the book, The Military Industrial Complex at 50. We concluded that this monster, guarded by patriotism, McCarthyism, and financial corruption, is the number one opponent of most campaigns for things decent and good, certainly of campaigns against poverty, for education, against homelessness, for civil rights, against environmental destruction, for peace and prosperity. It's not a coincidence that the United States spends several times the next approaching country on the military while trailing a great many countries in measures of education, health, security, and happiness.
by Stephen Leahy for InterPress Service
CAIRNS, Australia — Most corals thrive only in shallow waters, where there is enough light for them to grow. But the rapid rise in sea level, due to the melting of polar ice, is making these conditions increasingly scarce.
Measurements from tropical seas around the world reveal that the rise in sea level (3.3 mm/year) is happening at a faster rate than many corals have grown in the past 10,000 years, according to new research released at the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS).
by SGN staff
August 6, 2012 — Six hundred members of the Order of Canada have signed an appeal to the government of Canada to join in an international effort to eliminate nuclear weapons, Murray Thomson, coordinator of the project, announced today.
by Paul Smith
As the Harper government ramps up public events to commemorate the War of 1812, most Canadians are unaware of the full import of the role of First Nations and the pivotal role that war played in the history of Canada's treatment of aboriginal peoples. June is Aborginal History Month and June 21 was National Aboriginal Day. Let's take a look.
[Editor's note: below you will find an excerpt from David Swanson's remarks delivered at Peacestock 2012. Look for part two in the next issue of SGN]
I want to thank Bill Habedank for inviting me here and everyone who's been involved in setting up this wonderful event, which ought to be replicated all over this country. Almost our entire population claims to favor peace. At least three quarters of us favor getting the US military out of Afghanistan and ending that particular war, which by the way isn't ending. When carefully surveyed and shown what the federal budget is, a large majority of US residents favors cutting huge amounts of money out of the military and putting it to better use.
Carleton University in Ottawa has received a metaphorical black eye in its attempt to keep secret the details of an agreement that created its one-year Master's degree in Political Management. The program was brokered by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning and funded by Calgary oil magnate Clayton H Riddell. After a year of Carleton's stonewalling, the information and privacy commissioner of Ontario ordered the university to comply with a request by Canadian Press to make the agreement public.
It turns out that the program's five-person steering committee has what Canadian Press describes as "sweeping power" over the program's budget, academic hiring, its executive director and curriculum. Preston Manning acts as Chair, the Riddell Foundation gets to appoint two members and the university also appoints two. In publicity surrounding its launch in 2010, the program was described as "cross-partisan" in nature, but people with political connections to Manning are prominent on both the steering committee and the academic staff.
