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October 19, 2015. Election day in Canada.
Engineered illusions have fueled the Harper regime’s dangerous grip on power. Here’s good insight into how some of these illusions are collapsing along with international crude oil prices.
Stephen Harper’s toxic legacy. (Photo: via PriceofOil.org)
The tar sands corporations and the Harper regime are hard to tell apart. Both believe that plunder is their right, even their duty. Both are obsessed with greed and power, their religion. Both do harm on an almost numbing scale, and call it “good management.” Both depend on each other in myriad ways for their survival. Both hate democracy.
In addition to the tar sands nightmare, the Harper regime has presided over a full spectrum of unnatural disasters, including: systematic assaults on environmental protections and honest science, starvation of the national health care system, massive surveillance, escalating military budgets and eager participation in criminal wars wherever US authorities choose to attack.
In a sane society, all of these would be considered major crimes. In Canada, the current regime hopes they will be grounds for their re-election.
I have no illusions about elections as a solution to the enormous problems we face. I know that once in power, none of the parties on offer will go nearly as far as I think they should to address these vital issues honestly, fairly, and adequately. But:
By now we know from bitter experience that if the Harper regime can fool enough Canadians into voting for it in October, the disasters will only deepen and multiply.
Question is: How low can we go?
October 19, 2015. A fateful day for Canada.
Scottish Minister for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Richard Lochhead: “Banning growing genetically modified crops will protect and further enhance our clean, green status.”
Member of the Scottish Parliament Alison Johnstone: “GM is not the answer to food security, and would represent further capture of our food by big business.”
Details of the ban are here.
Similarly, in 2014 Russia banned the import and cultivation of GM crops. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev: “If Americans like to eat GMO products, let them. We don’t need to do that. We have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food.”
South of the border, the Conservative government of Britain has thrown open the door to GM crops.
In April, the European Commission reversed an earlier ban and approved the import of 10 new GM crops for human and animal consumption, including corn, soybeans, cotton and canola oil.
Meanwhile in the USA, the House of Representatives has just passed the perversely named “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act,” which prohibits state and local authorities from requiring safe and accurate GMO labeling. By now it’s clear that when consumers know about GMOs, they tend to be skeptical. But when they don’t know… It’s unlikely the Act will encounter any resistance in the Senate or the White House, both deeply beholden to the agri-chemical leviathans.
There is just one fly in the banning-GMOs ointment, but it’s a big one: Under massive international trade agreements like the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), negotiated in secret by corporate lobbies, corporations can sue any government bold enough to enact sensible, democratic measures meant to protect the public and the earth if there’s a chance they might limit actual or even potential corporate profits. A ban on GM crops is as likely a target as any.
Still, in taking responsible action, governments of countries like Scotland and Russia set an inspiring example of what is possible.
For a sane conversation on genetic manipulation and food security, visit Canadian scientist/farmer Ann Clark in Bold Scientists, here. Scroll down to chapter 2, Digging for thistles.
Honey bee, Western. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Bees keep us alive. They and other insects pollinate two-thirds of all food crops. No pollination, no food crops.
Bees and other pollinators are in great peril, their populations in sharp decline worldwide. A growing body of evidence identifies neonicotinoids, chemical pesticides that impair the neurological systems of insects, as a key factor in the decline.
Some of these chemicals are already banned or restricted in several European countries. Yet neonicotinoids remain the most widely used pesticides on earth, generating enormous profits.
Scientists gather and interpret data to make the necessary links between neonicotinoids and bee collapse. But in Canada and the USA scientists whose findings conflict with the corporate agenda are under escalating attack. Currently in the US:
“Your words are changed, your papers are censored or edited, or you are not allowed to submit them at all.” – a senior scientist at the US Department of Agriculture Research Service.
“Censorship and harassment poison good science and good policy.” – Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Follow the Honey, a report from Friends of the Earth, exposes how agrochemical corporations obscure links between their chemicals and pollinator decline, and block government regulation. Read it here.
For more on the battle for honest science, have a look inside Bold Scientists.
With remarkable foresight, in March an NDP member of the Ontario legislature, Peter Tabuns, introduced a bill (proposed law) to ban fracking in Ontario. (Fracking = hydraulic fracturing of the earth’s crust for gas and oil.)
With remarkable stupidity, the ruling Liberal government immediately denied any need for such a bill. There is no fracking yet in Ontario, said Natural Resources Minister Bill Mauro, so there is no need for a ban. More detail here.
Without a ban, the door stays wide open. Wherever the door is open, oil and gas corporations walk right in and start drilling. And wherever frackers drill, disaster follows. Ask people on what’s left of the ground in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, the Dakotas, south England…
Fracking consumes and poisons millions of litres of fresh water – for every well. The drillers inject a toxic brew of chemicals under high pressure to smash underground shale and force oil and gas to the surface. Fracking operations leak vast quantities of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas. They also set off earthquake epidemics where such incidents have been rare. And then there are the pipelines to transport the gas/oil to refineries and ports, and with pipelines, spills and explosions.
Result: Immense profit for a few, incalculable harm for the rest of us and the earth.
Worldwide, as soon as people become informed about fracking, resistance grows rapidly, and people have won government bans and moratoria in many municipalities, provinces, states and countries. Check here for an up-to-date list.
Meanwhile in Ontario, the door – our door, by the way – remains wide open.
In a 2014 poll, 75% of Ontarians supported a moratorium on fracking. As Peter Tabuns understands, the time to close the door is now, before it’s too late.
The bill to ban fracking is scheduled to come to a vote on May 7, a week from now. Send a message to Premier Wynne, via a new email campaign from the Council of Canadians: Ban fracking in Ontario. Close the door now.
The underground story on fracking and the growing resistance is here, inside Bold Scientists. Scroll down to chapter 10, The unsolved problem.
Michael Riordon 